"That may or may not be," he remarked gruffly. "So long as you haven't taken it upon yourself to pledge us to anything, well, that disposes of question number one. The next is, where are you going to sit in the House?" Maraton's eyebrows were slightly raised. "Where am I going to sit?" he repeated. "Remember, if you please, that as a member I have never been inside your House of Commons. I am not acquainted with its procedure. Where, in your opinion, ought I to sit?" "Your place is with us," Peter Dale declared. "I can't see that there's any doubt about that." "And why?" "You're a Labour man, aren't you?" Peter Dale asked. "You call yourself one, anyway. "If I am a Labour man," Maraton said, "why did you put up a candidate to oppose me at Nottingham?" Peter Dale smoked steadily for several moments. "It was nowt to do with me," he announced. "The fellow sprung up all on his own, as it were. Graveling here may have known something of it, but so far as we are concerned he was not an authorised candidate." Maraton shrugged his shoulders slightly. "There was nothing," he objected, "to convey that idea to the electors. He made use of the Labour agent and the Labour committee rooms. My telegram to you remained unanswered. Under those circumstances, I really can scarcely see how you find it possible to disown him." "In any case," Abraham Weavel intervened, with conciliation in his tone, "he didn't do himself a bit a' good nor you a bit of harm. Four hundred and thirty votes he polled out of eight thousand, and those were votes which otherwise would have gone to the Liberal. I should say myself that it did you good, if anything." "You may be right," Maraton admitted. "At the same time, one thing is very clear. You did not offer me the slightest official support. It is true that I did not ask for it. I prefer, as I have told you all along, my independence. It will be my object to continue without direct association with any party. If I can find a place in the house allotted to Independent Members, I shall sit there. If not, I shall sit with the Unionists." Peter Dale's face darkened. This was what they had feared. "You mean that you're breaking away from us?" he exclaimed angrily. "There's no room in our little party for Independent Members, no sort of sense in a mere handful of us all pulling different ways." "I never joined your party, Mr. Dale," Maraton reminded him. "I have never joined any man's party. I am for the people." "And what about us?" Graveling demanded. "Aren't we for the people? Isn't that what we're in Parliament for? Isn't that why we are called Labour Members?" Maraton regarded the last speaker steadily.