nour to assist
anyone to put that spoke in his wheel which he could not help longing
for.

At six o'clock he locked Blink into his study, and arming himself with
three leaders, set forth on his perilous adventure. Seven o'clock saw
him hurrying along the dismal road to the chapel, at whose door he met
with an unexpected check.

"Where is your ticket?" said a large man.

"I have none," replied Mr. Lavender, disconcerted; "for this is a
meeting of the Free Speakers' League, and it is for that reason that I
have come."

The large man looked at him attentively. "No admittance without ticket,"
he said.

"I protest," said Mr. Lavender. "How can you call yourselves by that
name and not let me in?"

The large man smiled.

"Well, he said, you haven't the strength of--of a rabbit--in you go!"

Mr. Lavender found himself inside and some indignation.

The meeting had begun, and a tall man at the pulpit end, with the face
of a sorrowful bull, was addressing an audience composed almost entirely
of women and old men, while his confederates sat behind him trying to
look as if they were not present. At the end of a row, about half-way up
the chapel, Mr. Lavender composed himself to listen, thinking, "However
eager I may be to fulfil my duty and break up this meeting, it behoves
me as a fair-minded man to ascertain first what manner of meeting it
is that I am breaking up." But as the speaker progressed, in periods
punctuated by applause from what, by his experience at the door, Mr.
Lavender knew to be a packed audience, he grew more and more uneasy. It
cannot be said that he took in what the speaker was saying, obsessed as
he was by the necessity of formulating a reply, and of revolving, to
the exclusion of all else, the flowers and phrases of the leaders which
during the day he had almost learned by heart. But by nature polite he
waited till the orator was sitting down before he rose, and, with the
three leaders firmly grasped in his hand, walked deliberately up to the
seated speakers. Turning his back on them, he said, in a voice to which
nervousness and emotion lent shrillness:

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is now your turn, in accordance with the
tradition of your society, to listen to me. Let us not mince matters
with mealy mouths. There are in our midst certain viperous persons,
like that notorious gentleman who had the sulphurous impudence to have
a French father--French! gentlemen; not German, ladies-mark the cunning
a