lowing there which seems to have come straight from the ice of the
North Pole and sounds like the devil playing bowls amongst the hills."

"The hunting?"

"All stopped, of course. A few nights ago, two stags came right up to
the house and quite a troop of the really wild ponies from over
Hawkbridge way. We've never had such a spell of cold in my memory. It
reminded one of the snowstorm in 'Lorna Doone.'--But after all, I told
you all about Woolhanger last night. I want your news."

"I seem to have settled down with the Democrats," he told her. "I do my
best to keep the party in line. The great trades unions are, of course,
our chief difficulty, but I think we are making progress even with them.
Some of the miners' representatives dined with me at the Trocadero the
other night. Good fellows they are, too. There is only one great
difficulty," he went on, "in the consolidation of my party, and that is
to get a little more breadth into the views of these men who represent
the leading industries. They are obsessed with the duties that they owe
to their own artificers and the labour connected with the particular
industry they represent. It is hard to make them see the importance of
any other subject. Yet we need these very men as lawmakers. I want
them to study production and the laws of production from a universal
point of view."

"I can quite understand," she acquiesced sympathetically, "that you have
a difficult class of men to deal with. Tell me what the evening papers
mean by their placards?"

"We had a small tactical success against the Government this afternoon,"
he explained. "It doesn't really amount to anything. We are not ready
for their resignation at the moment, any more than they are ready to
resign."

"You are an object of terror to all my people," she confided smilingly.
"They say that Horlock dare not go to the country and that you could
turn him out to-morrow if you cared to."

"So much for politics," he remarked drily.

"So much for politics," she assented. "And now about yourself?"

"A little finger of flame burning in an empty place," he sighed. "That
is how life seems to me when I take my hand off the plough."

She answered him lightly, but her face softened and her eyes shone with
sympathy.

"Aren't you by way of being just a little sentimental?"

"Perhaps," he admitted. "If I am, let me feel the luxury of it."

"One reads different things of you."

"For instance?"

"Town Topics says