Once again Mr Fortescue Wilson came to her rescue.

“Thank you, Miss Vyell,” he said in that tone of quiet confidence in which he had often congratulated her upon keeping her mouth open so patiently and at last gave her leave to shut it.

She turned quickly and went back to her seat, and while the auditorium rang with applause he leant over to the table on the platform and poured her out a glass of water which he handed her as he had handed to her so many glasses of water.

“Well done, Miss Vyell,” said Lord Buntingdon benignly, and if Miss Gosnay felt a prick of jealousy it ceased to smart almost at once when her fiance Tom Camidge began to address the audience. His speech and the two others that succeeded added little to what Mr Prew had already related, and the chairman was beginning to look rather bored. One of the most powerful weapons in the hands of evil is that after a time the basest and most barbaric actions under repetition get accepted as normal occurrences and fail to shock. Moreover, the experience gained from debating such topics as the advantage of collective security at the weekly meetings of this or that local debating society was inadequate to provide the technique required to hold the attention of as large an audience as this. The expressions of indignation grew gradually fainter as successive members related their experience, and it was evident that a more galvanic oratory was required if the National Union of Hikers was to be stimulated into effective action.

Fortunately Mr Percy Buckham was at hand to administer such a stimulus. He possessed, indeed, all the attributes a demagogue requires. His voice was as insistent as a mechanical drill, but the timbre was nevertheless pleasing. He had a chin which gave to his countenance the kind of romantic determination that a cowcatcher gives to the locomotive of a prairie express. He had a forefinger which when pointed at his audience had the admonitory force of a loaded pistol. He was as warm and fluent as the hot-water tap of a hotel bath, as self-confident as an Orangeman contesting a seat in County Down, and as full of catchpenny emotion as an illustrated daily.

“My lord, fellow-members of the great National Union of Hikers, lend me your ears,” Mr Buckham cried, and the meeting came back to life, with cheers and laughter for that phrase which by now was associated in the mind of the general public much more closely with Percy Buckham and his Little Songster than with Mark Antony and his funeral oration.