en themselves--"

"Lend us the instruments," said the Chief Organiser.

One of the earnest helpful friends was a skilled performer on the cornet,
the Cabinet Ministers were able to clash cymbals more or less in tune,
and the Chief Organiser has some knowledge of the drum.

"What tune would you prefer?" he asked Platterbaff.

"The popular song of the moment," replied the Agitator after a moment's
reflection.

It was a tune they had all heard hundreds of times, so there was no
difficulty in turning out a passable imitation of it. To the improvised
strains of "I didn't want to do it" the prisoner strode forth to freedom.
The word of the song had reference, it was understood, to the
incarcerating Government and not to the destroyer of the Albert Hall.

The seat was lost, after all, by a narrow majority. The local Trade
Unionists took offence at the fact of Cabinet Ministers having personally
acted as strike-breakers, and even the release of Platterbaff failed to
pacify them.

The seat was lost, but Ministers had scored a moral victory. They had
shown that they knew when and how to yield.

THE THREAT

Sir Lulworth Quayne sat in the lounge of his favourite restaurant, the
Gallus Bankiva, discussing the weaknesses of the world with his nephew,
who had lately returned from a much-enlivened exile in the wilds of
Mexico. It was that blessed season of the year when the asparagus and
the plover's egg are abroad in the land, and the oyster has not yet
withdrawn into it's summer entrenchments, and Sir Lulworth and his nephew
were in that enlightened after-dinner mood when politics are seen in
their right perspective, even the politics of Mexico.

"Most of the revolutions that take place in this country nowadays," said
Sir Lulworth, "are the product of moments of legislative panic. Take,
for instance, one of the most dramatic reforms that has been carried
through Parliament in the lifetime of this generation. It happened
shortly after the coal strike, of unblessed memory. To you, who have
been plunged up to the neck in events of a more tangled and tumbled
description, the things I am going to tell you of may seem of secondary
interest, but after all we had to live in the midst of them."

Sir Lulworth interrupted himself for a moment to say a few kind words to
the liqueur brandy he had just tasted, and them resumed his narrative.

"Whether one sympathises with the agitation for female suffrage or not
one ha