ied danger, claiming for it the merits of a
courageous and well-conceived scheme. Through all the changes that he
rang, he was heard with close attention, broken only by demonstrations
of approval or of dissent. At last one of his periods extorted a cheer
from a waverer. It acted on him as a spur to fresh exertions. He raised
his voice till it filled the chamber, and began his last and most
elaborate appeal.

Suddenly a change came over his hearers. The breathless silence of
engrossed attention gave place to a subdued stir; whispers were heard
here and there. Men were handing a newspaper about, accompanying its
transfer with meaning looks. He was not surprised, for members made no
scruple of reading their papers or writing their letters in the House,
but he was vexed to see that he had not gripped them closer. He went on,
but that ever-circulating paper had half his attention now. He noticed
Kilshaw come in with it and press it on Sir Robert's notice. Sir Robert
at first refused, but when Kilshaw urged, he read and glanced up at him,
so Medland thought, with a look of sadness. Coxon had got a paper now,
and left biting his nails to pore over it; he passed it to Puttock, and
the fat man bulged his cheeks in seeming wonder. Even his waverer, the
one who had cheered, was deep in it. Only Norburn was unconscious of it.
And, when they had read, they all looked at him again, not as they had
looked before, but, it seemed to him, with a curious wonder, half
mocking, half pitying, as one looks at a man who does not know the thing
that touches him most nearly. He glanced up at the galleries: there too
was the ubiquitous sheet; the Chief Justice and the President of the
Legislative Council were cheek by jowl over it, and it fell lightly from
Lady Eynesford's slim fingers, to be caught at eagerly by Eleanor
Scaife.

"What is it?" he whispered impatiently to Norburn; but his absorbed
disciple only bewilderedly murmured "What?" and the Premier could not
pause to tell him.

Now followed what Sir Robert maintained was the greatest feat of oratory
he had ever witnessed. Gathering his wandering wits together, Medland
plunged again whole-heartedly into his speech, and slowly, gradually,
almost, it seemed, step by step and man by man, he won back the thoughts
of his audience. He wrestled with that strange paper rival and overthrew
it. Man after man dropped it; its course was stayed; it fell underfoot
or fluttered idly down the gangways.