oals, upon which some breakfast
cans were steaming. Between the wigwam and the pavement a gigantic navvy
was hewing wooden paving-blocks out of the roadway.

The spectacle did not attract my interest specially, as this particular
piece of street had been eviscerated so often that I had grown callous
to its sufferings. But I paused for a moment to survey the big navvy's
muscles, and to wonder how early in the morning it would be necessary to
rise in order to catch a small boy with a clean face. The navvy was a
fine specimen of humanity, with a complexion tanned a dusky coffee
colour.

I was reflecting on the joys of the simple life and the futility of
politics and other indoor pastimes in general, when the big man rose
from his stooping posture and caught my eye. He appeared a little
disconcerted by my scrutiny, and turned his back and renewed his
exertions with increased vigour, favouring me hereafter with what
architects call a "south elevation" of himself.

I went home to breakfast, wondering where I had seen the big navvy's
back before. I mentioned casually to Kitty and the Twins that Goring
Street was up again. They wondered how the management of the Goring
Hotel liked it, with that mess under their very windows, and agreed with
me that it was high time Champion's Bill, due for its Third Reading
to-morrow, became law.

I stayed in bed till lunch-time, and then, rather late in the afternoon,
set out for the House, which I knew I should find in an extremely limp
condition after its previous night's dissipation. On the way I called in
at the Goring Hotel in Goring Street, where Champion lived when in town.
I found him in his room on the first floor, gazing out of the window
into the street.

I looked out too, to see what was interesting him. Directly below us lay
the encampment of the workmen whom I had seen in the morning. They had
hewed up a few yards of the wood pavement, and the smaller of the two
men was now immersed up to his waist in a hole, working rather
laboriously in the restricted space at his command with a pick-axe. The
boy was piling wooden blocks into a neat heap, and the big man, whose
form was only partially visible, was doing something inside the wigwam.

The roadway was more than half blocked, and cabs and omnibuses, in
charge of overheated and eloquent drivers, were being filtered through
the narrow space left at their disposal by a phlegmatic policeman.

"Look here," said Champion.

I lo