"Ladies and gentlemen." But there is no need to report his opening speech, which indeed was unusually brief for a chairman’s. Templeton had begun to think better of him, until, after announcing that he would not stand between the audience and their great comrade from London, he said that, when the speech of the evening was finished, he would venture to make a few remarks by way of applying its principles to local circumstances. He then introduced his friend and comrade, and sat down. Nor is it worth while, perhaps, to follow the "comrade from London" through his hour’s declamation. "The fellow could speak," said Templeton, afterwards, "and what he said wasn’t all rot. But it was full of the most hopelessly unpractical ideas, streaked with a vein of bitterness against every thing and every body, and absolutely vitiated for me by the assumption that every rich man is a knave, and every poor man a martyr. Noakes ought to have let well alone, but he tried to dot the i’s and simply provoked Eves’s question. If he had closed the meeting after the big speech, there’d have been no trouble." Whether it was that the bucolic mind moved too slowly to keep pace with the orator’s flying periods, or that the townsmen from London and the North were spell-bound by his fervid eloquence, or simply that the growing heat of the hall induced lethargy; certain it is that the meeting was quite orderly and decorous during the great speech. Not until the chairman was again on his feet did trouble arise, and that was due to a simple question put by Eves. But we must go back a little. When Eves descended into the furnace room, and released the stoker, he stripped off coat, waistcoat and collar, rolled up his shirt-sleeves, and started energetically upon his self-assumed task. Hardly two minutes had elapsed when he heard a rasping voice behind him. "That’s the way. Keep it going steady, my man. There’s a thermometer on the wall just inside the hall; run up every now and again and take a look at it: never let it drop below 60°." "Ay sure," said Eves, counterfeiting the local brogue, and Noakes, who had been standing on the bottom step, went away gratified that his orders were being carried out so well. "Not below 60°!" said Eves under his breath. "Sixteen degrees to go! Well, it’s a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart is _there_!" And he ladled coal and coke into the furnace with the fresh enthusiasm of an amateur. It occurred to him that if he was to slip up into the hall for the purpose of examining the thermometer it would be just as well to look the part he was playing. So he smeared his face and arms, and what was visible of his shirt, with coal dust, much assisted by the dampness of his perspiring skin. He paid his first visit to the thermometer just as the meeting opened. It hung on the wall near a group of Tommies who had been unable to obtain seats. They eyed him with a certain humorous sympathy. The thermometer registered 62°.