at there's
any doubt about that."

"And why?"

"You're a Labour man, aren't you?" Peter Dale asked. "You call yourself
one, anyway.

"If I am a Labour man," Maraton said, "why did you put up a candidate to
oppose me at Nottingham?"

Peter Dale smoked steadily for several moments.

"It was nowt to do with me," he announced. "The fellow sprung up all on
his own, as it were. Graveling here may have known something of it, but
so far as we are concerned he was not an authorised candidate."

Maraton shrugged his shoulders slightly.

"There was nothing," he objected, "to convey that idea to the electors.
He made use of the Labour agent and the Labour committee rooms. My
telegram to you remained unanswered. Under those circumstances, I
really can scarcely see how you find it possible to disown him."

"In any case," Abraham Weavel intervened, with conciliation in his tone,
"he didn't do himself a bit a' good nor you a bit of harm. Four hundred
and thirty votes he polled out of eight thousand, and those were votes
which otherwise would have gone to the Liberal. I should say myself
that it did you good, if anything."

"You may be right," Maraton admitted. "At the same time, one thing is
very clear. You did not offer me the slightest official support. It is
true that I did not ask for it. I prefer, as I have told you all along,
my independence. It will be my object to continue without direct
association with any party. If I can find a place in the house allotted
to Independent Members, I shall sit there. If not, I shall sit with the
Unionists."

Peter Dale's face darkened. This was what they had feared.

"You mean that you're breaking away from us?" he exclaimed angrily.
"There's no room in our little party for Independent Members, no sort of
sense in a mere handful of us all pulling different ways."

"I never joined your party, Mr. Dale," Maraton reminded him. "I have
never joined any man's party. I am for the people."

"And what about us?" Graveling demanded. "Aren't we for the people?
Isn't that what we're in Parliament for? Isn't that why we are called
Labour Members?"

Maraton regarded the last speaker steadily.

"Mr. Graveling," he said, "since you have mooted the question, I will
admit that I do not consider you, as a body of men, entirely devoted to
the cause of the people. You are each devoted to your own constituency.
It is your business to look after the few thousand voters who sent you
into Parliamen