ialist meeting-places.
There were not wanting disaffected brethren, who perused these appeals
with satisfaction. Schism flourished.

Comrade Roodhouse was of course a man of no means, but he numbered among
his followers two extremely serviceable men, one of them a practical
printer who carried on a small business in Camden Town; the other an
oil merchant, who, because his profits had never exceeded a squalid two
thousand a year, whereas another oil merchant of his acquaintance made
at least twice as much, was embittered against things in general, and
ready to assist any subversionary movement, yea, even with coin of the
realm, on the one condition that he should be allowed to insert articles
of his own composition in the new organ which it was proposed to
establish. There was no difficulty in conceding this trifle, and the
'Tocsin' was the result. The name was a suggestion of the oil merchant
himself, and no bad name if Socialists at large could be supposed
capable of understanding it; but the oil merchant was too important a
man to be thwarted, and the argument by which he supported his choice
was incontestable. 'Isn't it our aim to educate the people? Very well,
then let them begin by knowing what Tocsin means. I shouldn't know
myself if I hadn't come across it in the newspaper and looked it up in
the dictionary; so there you are!'

And there was the 'Tocsin,' a weekly paper like the 'Fiery Cross.' The
first number appeared in the middle of February, so admirably prepared
were the plans of Comrade Roodhouse. It appeared on Friday; the next
Sunday promised to be a lively day at Commonwealth Hall and elsewhere.
At the original head-quarters of the Union addresses were promised from
two leading men, Comrades Westlake and Mutimer. Comrade Roodhouse would
in the morning address an assembly on Clerkenwell Green; in the evening
his voice would summon adherents to the meeting-place in Hoxton which
had been the scene of our friend Richard's earliest triumphs. With few
exceptions the Socialists of that region had gone over to the new man
and the new paper.

Richard arrived in town on the Saturday, and went to the house in
Highbury, whither disagreeable business once more summoned him. Alice,
who, owing to her mother's resolute refusal to direct the household, had
not as yet been able to spend more than a day or two with Richard and
his wife, sent nothing but ill news to Wanley. Mrs. Mutimer seemed to be
breaking down in heal