Lord Buntingdon remained silent. He was pondering the motto of his house. Festina lente. He was reflecting upon the gait of his tortoises. He was asking himself whether it was wise to involve himself in what amounted to an incitement to the members of the N.U.H. to take the law into their own hands. The Gordon Riots! The Buntingdon Agrarian Outrages? The Buntingdon Raid? A vision passed across his fancy of himself at Madame Tussaud’s—of himself in shorts and shirt leaning upon his hiker’s staff, with waxen brow and waxen knees and glass eyes, staring at the crowds that read the number attached to him and turned to the catalogue to find out that this was the famous Earl of Buntingdon who had ravaged the Highlands of Scotland with an army of hikers.

“I don’t think I ought to take the chair, Mr Prew,” he said at last.

“You don’t, Lord Buntingdon? This will be a grievous blow to our Acting President, Mr Buckham. Must we take it you disapprove of the action we plan against Mr MacDonald?”

“By no means, Mr Prew, in my own house. But there is a great difference between commending your energetic proposals in private and commending them upon a public platform. My brother peers already disapprove of me very much. The speeches of few noble lords are received so frigidly as mine. But so far I have not directly attacked the sacred rights of landed property, and as a landed proprietor myself I am in rather a delicate position. You must see that?”

“Yes, I do see that, Lord Buntingdon, but I also see that you are one of democracy’s doughtiest champions and I feel that your absence from the platform on Friday next will be a bitter disappointment to our splendid young people who look up to you as a leader.”

“I can assure you, my dear Mr Prew, that I am acutely aware of my responsibility toward these splendid young people, but I confess I am apprehensive of what the Press may make of my open encouragement of what undoubtedly is lawlessness, however much we may recognize that such lawlessness was provoked by the previous lawlessness of Mr MacDonald.”