The evening of the meeting came, and for half an hour there were numerous arrivals at the many doors of the huge building. Each person had separately to interchange the pass-words at both the outer and inner doors. At length about twelve hundred people were assembled. The lights outside the glass hall were comparatively feeble. The powerful electric lamps were not turned on. The inner hall was unlighted, and received only a dull reflection from the outer lights. Some surprise was expressed by the usual frequenters of the Hall at the appearance inside the glass wall of a wooden dais, sufficiently large to hold three or four people, and with shallow steps on one side leading up to it. Inquiry was made as to its object. The doorkeeper, suitably instructed, replied carelessly it was thought, they might require a stage from which the speakers could address the audience. The present meeting certainly did not want it. The speakers had no desire to individually bring themselves into notice. Hilda, muffled up as were the rest, quietly took a seat close to the steps of the dais. No president was appointed; no one appeared to have any control; yet as the meeting proceeded it was evident that its tactics had been carefully thought out, and that most, if not all, of the speakers were fulfilling the parts allotted to them. First a tall, elderly man rose, and with considerable force and fluency enlarged upon the evils of the present large taxation. He went into figures, and his speech ought to have been effective, only no one seemed to take any interest in it. Then there loomed on the meeting the person apparently of a middle-aged woman. The cloaks and hats carefully mystified the identities of the sexes and individual peculiarities. This speaker went a little further. She explained that maintaining the Empire as a whole entailed the sacrifice of regulating the taxation so as to suit the least wealthy portions. She carefully guarded herself from being more than explanatory. The comparative poverty of England and the exactions of the self-indulgent Londoners, she said, necessitated a scale of taxation that hardy and rich Australia, New Zealand, and Canada did not require. Then a historically disposed young woman rose and dwelt upon the time when England thought a great deal more of herself than of the Colonies and to curry favour with foreign countries placed them on the same footing as her own dominions. Little by little various speakers progressed, testing at every step the feelings of the audience, until at last one went so far as to ask the question whether the time would ever come when Australia would be found to be quite large and powerful enough to constitute an empire of itself. "Mind," said he, "I do not say the time will come." Then an apparently excited Australian arose. She would not, she said, say a word in favour of such an empire; but she, an Australian bred and born, and with a long line of Australian ancestors,