ked another of the Chief Justice, who had
come in from court and was taking a cup of tea.

"It's mere bullying," exclaimed a third, catching Kilshaw's sympathetic
eye.

"We'll not be bullied," answered that gentleman. "Every right-feeling
and respectable man is with us, from the Governor----"

"The Governor? How do you know?" burst from half-a-dozen mouths.

"I do know. He's furious with Medland, partly for doing the thing at
all, partly for not telling him sooner. He thinks Medland took advantage
of his civility yesterday and paraded him in the Park as on his side,
while all the time he never said a word about this move of his."

"Ah!" said everybody, and Coxon, who knew nothing about the matter,
endorsed Kilshaw's account with a significant nod.

"It's a gambler's last throw," declared Puttock. "Honestly, I'm ashamed
to have been so long in finding out his real character."

Some one here weakly defended the Premier.

"After all," he said, "there's nothing wrong in a public meeting, and
perhaps that's all----"

Puttock overbore him with a solemnly emphasised reiteration--

"A discredited gambler's last throw."

"It's Jimmy Medland's last throw, anyhow," added Kilshaw. "I'll see to
that."

"Look! There he is!" called a man in the bow-window, and the company
crowded round to look.

Medland was walking down the street side by side with a short, thick-set
man, whose close-cut, stiff, black hair, bright black eyes, and bristly
chin-tip gave him a foreign look. The man seemed to be giving
explanations or detailing arrangements, and Medland from time to time
nodded assent.

"Who's that with him?" asked Puttock.

The desired information came from a young fellow in the Government
service.

"I know him," he said, "because he applied to me for a certificate of
naturalisation a month or two ago. Francois Gaspard he calls
himself--heaven knows if it's his real name. He's a Frenchman, anyhow,
and, I rather fancy, not a voluntary exile."

"Ah!" exclaimed Kilshaw, "what makes you think that?"

"Oh, I had a little talk with him, and he said he'd been kept too long
out of his country to care about going back now, although the door had
been opened at last."

"An amnesty, you suppose?"

"I thought so. And I happen to know he's very active among the political
clubs here."

"Oh, that explains Medland being with him," said Kilshaw. "Some
Communist or Socialist probably."

Attention being thus directed to the str