me either as a
politician or a friend, or however you like. It gives me so much
pleasure to talk with you. Uncle will tell you that every one spoils
me. Even Sir William comes and tells me about his troubles with the
Irish Members. Will you come?"

He made a half promise. His departure was a little hasty--almost
abrupt; he was conscious of a distinct turmoil of feeling. He hurried
away, as though anxious to rid himself of the influence of the place.
At the corner of the street he was about to hail a taxicab when a man
gripped him by the arm. He turned quickly around. The face was somehow
familiar to him--the grey, untidy beard, long hairy eyebrows, sunken
eyes, the shabby clothes. It was David Ross.

"Can I speak a word with you, Mr. Maraton?"

Maraton nodded.

"Of course. I don't remember your name. You were at Manchester,
weren't you, and at my house with the others?"

"Ross, my name is," the man answered. "I'd no call to be at Manchester,
for I'm not one of the delegates. I'm not an M.P. but I've done a lot
of speaking for them lately, and Peter Dale, he said if I paid my own
expenses I could come along. I borrowed the money. I had to come. I
had to hear you speak. I wanted to know your message."

"Were you satisfied with it?" Maraton enquired.

"I don't know," was the doubtful reply. "You ask me a question I can't
answer myself. I thought so at the time, but since then I've spent many
sleepless nights and many tired hours, asking myself that question. Now
I am here to ask you one. Did you speak that night what you had in your
mind when you left America?--what you thought of on the steamer coming
over--what you meant to say when first you set foot in this country?"

Maraton was interested. He walked slowly along by the side of his
companion.

"I did not," he admitted. "I came with other views.

"I knew it!" Ross exclaimed, almost fiercely. "I felt it, man. You
came to preach redemption, even though the means were sharp and short
and sudden, means of blood, means of death. Before you ever came here,
I seemed to hear your voice crying across that great continent, crying
even across the ocean. It was a terrible cry, but it seemed as though
it must reach up into heaven and down into hell, for it was aflame with
truth. It seemed to me that I could see the revolution upon us, the
death that is like sleep, the looking down once more from some
undiscovered place upon the new morning. You never uttered that cry
o