"I'm only a workin chauffeur," he said, wagging his big head, "but I got a conscience, and I got a country. And I'm not ashamed of em eether. I can't do much bein only a worker as you might say. But I can do me bit. Put me down for fifty guineas, please, Mr. Town-clerk." He sat down modestly amidst loud applause. "Who's that?" whispered the Colonel on the platform. "Trupp's chauffeur," the Archdeacon, who had a black patch over his eye, answered with a swagger--"my sidesman, Alfred Caspar. Not so bad for a working-man?" He cackled hilariously. Then a voice from Lancashire, resonant and jarring, came burring across the hall. "Mr. Chairman, are you aware that Alfred Caspar is turning his sister-in-law out of his house with four children." Alf leapt to his feet. "It's a lie!" he cried. A big young woman sitting just in front of Joe rose on subdued wings. She was bare-headed, be-shawled, a dark Madonna of English village-life. "Yes, you are, Alf," she said, and sat down quietly as she had risen. There was a dramatic silence. Then the Archdeacon started to his feet and pointed with accusing claw like a witch-doctor smelling out a victim. "I know that woman!" he cawed raucously. A lady sitting in the front row just under the platform rose. "So do I," she said. It was Mrs. Trupp, and her voice, still and pure, fell on the heated air like a drop of delicious rain. She sat down again. The Archdeacon too had resumed his seat, very high and mighty; and Bobby Chislehurst was whispering in his ear from behind. The Colonel had risen now, calm and courteous as always, in the suppressed excitement. "Am I not right in thinking that Mrs. Caspar is the wife of an old Hammer-man who joined up at once on the declaration of war and is at this moment somewhere in France fighting our battles for us?" The question was greeted with a storm of applause from the back of the hall. "Good old Colonel!" some one called. "Mr. Chairman, d'you mean to accept that man's cheque?" shouted Joe. "Yes or no?" In the uproar that followed, Alf rose again, white and leering. "I'd not have spoken if I'd known I was to be set upon like this afore em all for offering a bit of help to me country. As to my character and that, I believe I'm pretty well beknown for a patriot in Beachbourne." "As to patriotism, old cock," called Joe, "didn't you sack your cleaners without notice on the declaration of war?" "No, I didn't then!" shouted Alf with the exaggerated ferocity of the man who knows his only chance is to pose as righteously indignant.