and, as the parties were not now before the
public, that horror of gunpowder, vitriol, and life-preservers, which
figured in their notices and resolutions, did not appear in their
conversation. Grotait alone was silent and doubtful. This Grotait was
the greatest fanatic of the four, and, like all fanatics, capable of
vast cruelty: but his cruelty lay in his head, rather than in his heart.
Out of Trade questions, the man, though vain and arrogant, was of a
genial and rather a kindly nature; and, even in Trade questions, being
more intelligent than his fellows, he was sometimes infested with a
gleam of humanity.

His bigotry was, at this moment, disturbed by a visitation of that kind.

"I'm perplexed," said he: "I don't often hesitate on a Trade question
neither. But the men we have done were always low-lived blackguards, who
would have destroyed us, if we had not disabled them. Now this Little is
a decent young chap. He struck at the root of our Trades, so long as
he wrought openly. But on the sly, and nobody knowing but ourselves,
mightn't it be as well to shut our eyes a bit? My informant is not in
trade."

The other three took a more personal view of the matter. Little was
outwitting, and resisting them. They saw nothing for it but to stop him,
by hook or by crook.

While they sat debating his case in whispers, and with their heads so
close you might have covered them all with a tea-tray, a clear musical
voice was heard to speak to the barmaid, and, by her direction, in
walked into the council-chamber--Mr. Henry Little.

This visit greatly surprised Messrs. Parkin, Jobson, and Potter, and
made them stare, and look at one another uneasily. But it did not
surprise Grotait so much, and it came about in the simplest way. That
morning, at about eleven o'clock, Dr. Amboyne had called on Mrs. Little,
and had asked Henry, rather stiffly, whether he was quite forgetting
Life, Labor and Capital. Now the young man could not but feel that,
for some time past, he had used the good doctor ill; had neglected and
almost forgotten his benevolent hobby; so the doctor's gentle reproach
went to his heart, and he said, "Give me a day or two, sir, and I'll
show you how ashamed I am of my selfish behavior." True to his pledge,
he collected all his notes together, and prepared a report, to be
illustrated with drawings. He then went to Cheetham's, more as a matter
of form than any thing, to see if the condemned grindstone had been
chang