quite enough for once."

"You couldn't talk too much for me," answered Ned. "You ought to come up
to a shed and have a pitch with the chaps. They'd sit up all night
listening. I've to meet Nellie between five and six at the top of the
steps in the garden," he added, a little bashfully. "Have we time?"

"Plenty of time," said Geisner, smiling. "You won't miss her."

CHAPTER XII.

LOVE AND LUST.

The picnic party had moved on while they talked, but a multitude of
sitters and walkers were now everywhere, particularly as they climbed the
slope to the level. There the Sunday afternoon meetings were in full
swing.

On platforms of varying construction, mostly humble, the champions of
multitudinous creeds and opinions were holding forth to audiences which
did not always greet their utterances approvingly. They stood for a while
near a vigorous iconoclast, who from the top of a kitchen chair laid down
the Law of the Universe as revealed by one Clifford, overwhelming with
contumely a Solitary opponent in the crowd who was foolish enough to
attempt to raise an argument on the subject of "atoms." Near at hand, a
wild-eyed religionary was trying to persuade a limited and drifting
audience that a special dispensation had enabled him to foretell exactly
the date of the Second Coming of Christ. Then came the Single Tax
platform, a camp-stool with a board on it, wherefrom a slender lad,
dark-eyed and good-looking, held forth, with a flow of language and a
power of expression that was remarkable, upon the effectiveness of a land
tax as a remedy for all social ills.

Ned had never seen such a mass of men with such variegated shades of
thought assembled together before. There was a well-dressed bald-headed
individual laying down the axioms of that very Socialism of which Geisner
and he had been talking. There was an ascetic looking man just delivering
a popular hymn, which he sang with the assistance of a few gathered
round, as the conclusion of open-air church. There was the Anarchist he
had seen at Paddy's Market, fervidly declaring that all government is
wrong and that men are slaves and curs for enduring it and tyrants for
taking part in it. There was the inevitable temperance orator, the rival
touters for free trade and protection, and half-a-dozen others with an
opinion to air. They harangued and shouted there amid the trees, on the
grass, in the brilliant afternoon sunshine that already threw long
shadows over the s