This explanation was a square-built, sturdy-looking man of some forty years. His appearance was the reverse of engaging, but by no means lacking in intelligence. He was ill-satisfied and annoyed with the universe, and habitually defied it from the stronghold of a double bed. Thither he had retired after the death of his father, an old market-porter, who had been crushed by the fall of a basket of potatoes. The son saw in this tragic circumstance the outcome and the reward of labour, swore a solemn oath never to do a stroke of work again, threw up his job, and from that day became a confirmed loafer in the Anarchist party. Some months previously, while propagandising in the workhouse, he found the youth there, and learned from his own lips how, being disinclined to become a burden on his poor old parents after his exit from the army, he had seen no other alternative but to become a pauper, and make the best he could of the opportunities afforded him by the poor-rates. From the workhouse he was dragged triumphantly forth by his new friend, and became an easy convert to anarchic and communistic principles. The only feminine element in this assembly was a fair, earnest-looking Russian girl, whose slight knowledge of English did not allow her to follow the proceedings very accurately. She was an almost pathetic figure in her naïve enthusiasm, and evidently regarded her present companions as seriously as those she had left behind her in Russia, and seemed to imagine they played as dangerous a rôle, and ran the same risk as they did. There were several others present among whom the loafer type was perhaps in the ascendant. But there were also many of the more intelligent artisan class, discontented with their lot; labourers and dockers who had tramped up after a hard day's work, a young artist who looked rather of the Social Democratic type, a cabman, a few stray gentlemen, a clever but never-sober tanner, a labour agitator, a professional stump-orator, and one or two fishy and nondescript characters of the Hebraic race. O'Flynn, the printer of the _Bomb_, was a cantankerous Irishman with a taste for discoursing on abstract questions, concerning which he grew frightfully muddled and confused. He had a rather mad look in his eye and a disputatious manner.