irst decisive sign of sitting
down. Another man on the same side was also up, but Wilkins, black and
frowning, held his own stubbornly, and his rival subsided.

With the first sentences of the new speech the House knew that it was to
have an emotion, and men came trooping in again. And certainly the short
stormy utterance was dramatic enough. Dissent on the part of an
important north-country Union from some of the most vital machinery of
the bill which had been sketched by Wharton--personal jealousy and
distrust of the mover of the resolution--denial of his representative
place, and sneers at his kid-gloved attempts to help a class with which
he had nothing to do--the most violent protest against the servility
with which he had truckled to the now effete party of free contract and
political enfranchisement--and the most passionate assertion that
between any Labour party, worthy of the name, and either of the great
parties of the past there lay and must lie a gulf of hatred,
unfathomable and unquenchable, till Labour had got its rights, and
landlord, employer, and dividend-hunter were trampled beneath its
heel--all these ugly or lurid things emerged with surprising clearness
from the torrent of north-country speech. For twenty minutes Nehemiah
Wilkins rioted in one of the best "times" of his life. That he was an
orator thousands of working men had borne him witness again and again;
and in his own opinion he had never spoken better.

The House at first enjoyed its sensation. Then, as the hard words
rattled on, it passed easily into the stage of amusement. Lady
Cradock's burly husband bent forward from the front Opposition bench,
caught Wharton's eye, and smiled, as though to say: "What!--you haven't
even been able to keep up appearances so far!" And Wilkins's final
attack upon the Liberals--who, after ruining their own chances and the
chances of the country, were now come cap in hand to the working man
whining for his support as their only hope of recovery--was delivered to
a mocking chorus of laughter and cheers, in the midst of which, with an
angry shake of his great shoulders, he flung himself down on his seat.

Meanwhile Wharton, who had spent the first part of Wilkins's speech in a
state of restless fidget, his hat over his eyes, was alternately sitting
erect with radiant looks, or talking rapidly to Bennett, who had come to
sit beside him. The Home Secretary got up after Wilkins had sat down,
and spent a genial fo