nd audacity of the fellow; like that renegade Labour leader, who has
never led anything, yet, if he had his will, would lead us all into the
pit of destruction; like those other high-brow emasculates who mistake
their pettifogging pedantry for pearls of price, and plaster the plain
issue before us with perfidious and Pacifistic platitudes. We say at
once, and let them note it, we will have none of them; we will have----"
Here his words were drowned by an interruption greater even than that;
which was fast gathering among the row of speakers behind him, and the
surprised audience in front; and he could see the large man being forced
from the door and up the aisle by a posse of noisy youths, till he
stood with arms pinioned, struggling to turn round, just in front of Mr.
Lavender. Seeing his speech thus endangered, the latter cried out at the
top of his voice: "Free speech, gentlemen, free speech; I have come here
expressly to see that we have nothing of the sort." At this the young
men, who now filled the aisle, raised a mighty booing.

"Gentlemen," shouted Mr. Lavender, waving his leaders, "gentlemen---"
But at this moment the large man was hurled into contact with what
served Mr. Lavender for stomach, and the two fell in confusion. An
uproar ensued of which Mr. Lavender was more than vaguely conscious, for
many feet went over him. He managed, however, to creep into a corner,
and, getting up, surveyed the scene. The young men who had invaded the
meeting, much superior in numbers and strength to the speakers, to
the large man, and the three or four other able-bodied persons who had
rallied to them from among the audience, were taking every advantage of
their superiority; and it went to Mr. Lavender's heart to see how they
thumped and maltreated their opponents. The sight of their brutality,
indeed, rendered him so furious that, forgetting all his principles
and his purpose in coming to the meeting, he climbed on to a form, and
folding his arms tightly on his breast, called out at the top of his
voice:

"Cads! Do not thus take advantage of your numbers. Cads!" Having thus
defended what in his calmer moments he would have known to be the wrong,
he awaited his own fate calmly. But in the hubbub his words had passed
unnoticed. "It is in moments like these," he thought, "that the great
speaker asserts his supremacy, quells the storm, and secures himself a
hearing." And he began to rack his brains to remember how they did it.