"Who—raised—Widow—Pouncey’s—rent?" sang the Tommies, to the tune of "Here we suffer grief and pain" _da capo_. "Who was it, mate?" asked one of them. "I dare say he’ll tell us presently," said Eves, "if you keep it up a little longer." He had his eyes on the thermometer. The "comrade from London" got up and spoke earnestly in Noakes’s ear, while the chorus continued. The mayor gave a sickly smile and held up his hand. There was silence. "My friend on my right," said the mayor, "reminds me as there’s nothing more powerful than the truth." "Righto!" yelled the Tommies. "Who—raised——" "_Nobody!_" shouted the mayor. "’Tis a lie!" "What’s a lie?" cried one of the men. The others looked enquiringly at Eves. "I say ’tis a lie!" repeated the mayor. "Mrs. Pouncey pays me five shilling a week, the same as she’s paid——" He stopped, for three parts of the way down the hall there rose a stout figure, with face flushed and bonnet awry. There was a moment’s breathless silence, then Mrs. Pouncey, with forefinger outstretched towards the mayor, spoke out. "Ay, the same as I’ve paid honest for twenty year, afore ever you come into the town, and ’twas you as said ’twould be doubled as soon as Parlyment lets you, if not afore, and not a word of a lie in it, Mr. Noakes." The old woman collapsed into her seat, amid murmurs of "Shame!" "Good old Mrs. Pouncey!" "Who said profiteer?" "Noakes raised Widow Pouncey’s rent!" "Chuck him out!" "Get out, old crocodile!" The hall rang with various cries. Eves, smiling broadly, glanced at the thermometer The mercury touched 76°. Noakes leant forward over the table, and shaking his fists, roared: "As chairman of this meeting, and Mayor of Pudlington, here I be, and here I bide." He started back suddenly, putting a finger between his collar and his neck, and looking upward. Next moment he dropped his head and brushed a drop of water from his nose. Several of the platform party turned their faces up, started back, and upset their chairs. Two or three thin streams of water, as from the eyelets in the spray of a shower bath, were descending from the unplastered ceiling. Noakes edged a little to the left, and was opening his mouth again, when with a hiss and clatter like a heavy shower of rain upon a glass house, the whole contents of Templeton’s experimental tank poured down between the laths of the matchboard. Noakes gasped and spluttered, the ladies of his party shrieked, all the occupants of the platform stampeded like a flock of sheep, overturning their chairs, obstructing one another in their mad flight for the stairs. For one moment of amazement the audience was silent; then a roar of inextinguishable laughter broke from nearly three hundred throats, whistles and cat-calls resounded, the Tommies looked round for the stoker, whom, by some obscure instinct or intuition, they connected with the catastrophic shower. But Eves had slipped away.