viously
arranged with the party whips, selected one,--a young face, hardy,
intelligent, emotionless.

I need not say that it was the face of Chillingly Gordon. His position
that night was one that required dexterous management and delicate tact.
He habitually supported the Government; his speeches had been hitherto
in their favour. On this occasion he differed from the Government. The
difference was known to the chiefs of the Opposition, and hence the
arrangement of the whips, that he should speak for the first time after
ten o'clock, and for the first time in reply to a Cabinet minister.
It is a position in which a young party man makes or mars his future.
Chillingly Gordon spoke from the third row behind the Government; he had
been duly cautioned by Mivers not to affect a conceited independence, or
an adhesion to "violence" in ultra-liberal opinions, by seating
himself below the gangway. Speaking thus, amid the rank and file of the
Ministerial supporters, any opinion at variance with the mouthpieces of
the Treasury Bench would be sure to produce a more effective sensation
than if delivered from the ranks of the mutinous Bashi Bazouks divided
by the gangway from better disciplined forces. His first brief sentences
enthralled the House, conciliated the Ministerial side, kept the
Opposition side in suspense. The whole speech was, indeed, felicitously
adroit, and especially in this, that, while in opposition to the
Government as a whole, it expressed the opinions of a powerful section
of the Cabinet, which, though at present a minority, yet being the most
enamoured of a New Idea, the progress of the age would probably render
a safe investment for the confidence which honest Gordon reposed in its
chance of beating its colleagues.

It was not, however, till Gordon had concluded that the cheers of his
audience--impulsive and hearty as are the cheers of that assembly when
the evidence of intellect is unmistakable--made manifest to the gallery
and the reporters the full effect of the speech he had delivered. The
chief of the Opposition whispered to his next neighbour, "I wish we
could get that man." The Cabinet minister whom Gordon had answered--more
pleased with a personal compliment to himself than displeased with an
attack on the measure his office compelled him to advocate--whispered to
his chief, "That is a man we must not lose."

Two gentlemen in the Speaker's gallery, who had sat there from the
opening of the debate,