iable--he could feel completely at home; and though the
audience was by no means confined to Knox Church, Lorne did feel at
home. Dora Milburn's countenance he might perhaps have missed, but Dora
was absent by arrangement. Mr Milburn, as the fight went on, had shown
himself so increasingly bitter, to the point of writing letters in the
Mercury attacking Wallingham and the Liberal leaders of South Fox, that
his daughter felt an insurmountable delicacy in attending even Lorne's
"big meeting." Alfred Hesketh meant to have gone, but it was ten by the
Milburns' drawing-room clock before he remembered. Miss Filkin actually
did go, and brought home a great report of it. Miss Filkin would no more
have missed a Minister than she would a bishop; but she was the only
one.

Lorne had prepared for this occasion for a long time. It was certain
to come, the day of the supreme effort, when he should make his final
appeal under the most favourable circumstances that could be devised,
when the harassing work of the campaign would be behind him, and nothing
would remain but the luxury of one last strenuous call to arms. The
glory of that anticipation had been with him from the beginning; and in
the beginning he saw his great moment only in one character. For weeks,
while he plodded through the details of the benefits South Fox had
received and might expect to receive at the hands of the Liberal party,
he privately stored argument on argument, piled phrase on phrase, still
further to advance and defend the imperial unity of his vision on this
certain and special opportunity. His jihad it would be, for the faith
and purpose of his race; so he scanned it and heard it, with conviction
hot in him, and impulse strong, and intention noble. Then uneasiness had
arisen, as we know; and under steady pressure he had daily drawn himself
from these high intentions, persuaded by Bingham and the rest that
they were not yet "in shape" to talk about. So that his address on this
memorable evening would have a different stamp from the one he designed
in the early burning hours of his candidature. He had postponed
those matters, under advice, to the hour of practical dealing, when a
Government which it would be his privilege to support would consider and
carry them. He put the notes of his original speech away in his office
desk with solicitude--it was indeed very thorough, a grand marshalling
of the facts and review of the principles involved--and pigeonholed