"No, no, no," said Mr. Bailey, "I didn't say he'd been kidnapped. I said 'let's go and tell the audience he's been kidnapped!' I don't know what's happened to him, and neither do you nor anybody else. Perhaps he's dead; perhaps his motor's broken down. Perhaps he made a mistake about the hour. Perhaps he's gone mad. It's no good speculating; the point is to prevent a riot." As he said this the noise within the hall grew so like that of a herd of wild bulls that Mr. Clay was spurred to yet further activity. "But you can't go and tell them an untruth," he said, almost crying as he said it. "... Oh, let's go in and hold the meeting," he added, and then concluded with the apparently irrelevant words: "I'm a business man and I like business ways." Mr. Bailey acceded as he would have acceded to any other misfortune, and the whole troop of them came tramping in, following Mr. Clay up the rough, improvised steps on to the platform. The appearance of these notables solemnly filing in and taking their chairs soothed for a moment the angry mass below, but they looked in the procession for the dome-like forehead and the crescent moustache of a Clutterbuck: neither were there. Mr. Bailey watched the seething audience kindly through his spectacles, and marvelled at the numbers who had come. There must have been over five thousand men present; the furthest recesses of the great shed were crowded with lads and young labourers standing upon the benches the better to follow the speeches, and packed as close as herrings, and a big mob outside was even now struggling at the doors. It was fearfully hot and close, and at the back a woman had fainted. He feared for the result. Mr. Clay whispered to him hurriedly, but Mr. Bailey was observed to shake his head. Then Mr. Clay was seen to turn to Mr. Alderman Thorne and urge--perhaps implore--his aid: that gentleman ponderously rose to speak. His voice was deep and resonant: his gestures large. He reminded his hearers of many things: that English freedom was at stake, that their ancestors had torn up the railings in Hyde Park, and that the spirit of Cromwell still lived. Then next, as he had been hurriedly advised, he suggested that they should sing that great new song and hymn which expressed their determination and their hopes. As yet no one moved. He recited the first verse and begged them with religious enthusiasm to sing it when he had completed the opening words: "_The Lion, the Lion, his teeth are prepared, He has blown the loud bugle, his sabre is bared._" Kipling's magnificent words brought a dozen to their feet; a few more were thinking of rising; a woman's voice had already begun, somewhat prematurely, "_The Lion_ ..." in a high treble, when a large, bearded man, with a fearless face and an appearance of fixed determination sprang up in the body of the meeting and said with a rich North country burr: "Mrrr. Chairrman."