such encouragement; but he delayed his departure
for a few minutes with talk round about the question of the prudence
which must necessarily be observed in publishing a project so
undigested. Mr. Westlake, who was responsible for the paper, was not
likely to transgress the limits of good taste, and when Richard, on
Saturday morning, searched eagerly the columns of the 'Cross,' he was
not altogether satisfied with the extreme discretion which marked a
brief paragraph among those headed: 'From Day to Day.' However, many
of the readers were probably by that time able to supply the missing
proper-name.

It was not the fault of Daniel Dabbs if members of the Hoxton and
Islington branch of the Union read the paragraph without understanding
to whom it referred. Daniel was among the first to hear of what had
befallen the Mutimer family, and from the circle of his fellow-workmen
the news spread quickly. Talk was rife on the subject of Mutimer's
dismissal from Longwood Brothers', and the sensational rumour
which followed so quickly found an atmosphere well prepared for its
transmission. Hence the unusual concourse at the meeting-place in
Islington next Sunday evening, where, as it became known to others
besides Socialists, Mutimer was engaged to lecture. Richard experienced
some vexation that his lecture was not to be at Commonwealth Hall, where
the gathering would doubtless have been much larger.

The Union was not wealthy. The central hall was rented at Mr. Westlake's
expense; two or three branches were managing with difficulty to support
regular places of assembly, such as could not being obliged as yet to
content themselves with open-air lecturing. In Islington the leaguers
met in a room behind a coffee-shop, ordinarily used for festive
purposes; benches were laid across the floor, and an estrade at the
upper end exalted chairman and lecturer. The walls were adorned with
more or less striking advertisements of non-alcoholic beverages, and
with a few prints from the illustrated papers. The atmosphere was
tobaccoey, and the coffee-shop itself, through which the visitors had to
make their way, suggested to the nostrils that bloaters are the working
man's chosen delicacy at Sunday tea. A table just within the door of the
lecture-room exposed for sale sundry Socialist publications, the latest
issue of the 'Fiery Cross' in particular.

Richard was wont to be among the earliest arrivals: to-night he was
full ten minutes behind t