ndlady was going to do that," Aaron continued. "It was all I
could do to sit in the cab by his side. I wish--yes, I almost wish that
he'd never got up from that carpet."

"Thanks," Maraton replied. "I didn't come over here to fill the inside
of an English prison!"

"Prison!"

Aaron's expression of contempt was sublime.

"There's nothing they could have done to you, sir. All the same, I only
wish that your blow had killed him."

"Why?"

Aaron dropped his voice for a minute.

"Because wherever we go or move," he said, "there will always be the
snake in the grass. He will be filled forever with a poisonous hatred
for you. He will never dare to raise his hand against you to your
face--he isn't that sort of man--but he'll have his stab before he's
finished. He was born a sneak."

Maraton smiled carelessly as he bade them good night.

"The one thing in the world," he reminded them, "worse than having no
friends, is to have no enemies."

CHAPTER XXVI

Eight days later, Maraton delivered his preliminary address to the
ironworkers of Sheffield, and at six o'clock the next morning the strike
had been unanimously proclaimed. The columns of the daily newspapers,
still hopelessly bound over to the interests of the capitalist, were
full of solemn warnings against this new and disturbing force in English
sociology. The _Daily Oracle_ alone paused to present a few words of
appreciation of the splendid dramatic force wielded by this
revolutionary.

"If this man is sincere," the Oracle declared, "the country needs him.
If he is a charlatan, then for heaven's sake, even at the expense of all
the laws that were ever framed, away with him! There is no man
breathing to-day who is developing a more potent, a more wide-reaching
influence upon the destinies of our country."

Maraton's first address had been delivered to a great multitude, but
there was no building whose roof could cover the hordes of men who had
made up their minds to hear his last words at Sheffield. From far and
wide, the people came that night in countless streams. A platform had
been arranged in the middle of the principal pleasure park of the town,
and around this, from early in the afternoon, they began to take up
their places. When night fell, so far as the eye could see, the ground
was covered with a black mass of humanity. The multitude filled the
park and crowded up the encircling streets. As the darkness deepened,
they lit torches. Beyond, down