What Mr. Trupp told Mr. Pigott, more it is true in chaff than in earnest, was partially true at least. Liberalism was giving way beneath the Colonel's calculated assault. After Lord Roberts's visit to Beachbourne the enemy dropped into the lines of the besiegers sometimes in single spies and sometimes in battalions. Only Mr. Pigott held out stubbornly, and that less perhaps from conviction than from a sense of personal grievance against the Colonel. For three solid years the pugnacious old Nonconformist had been trying to fix a quarrel on the man he wished to make his enemy; but his adversary had eluded battle with grace and agility. That in itself happily afforded a good and unforgiveable cause of offence. "They won't fight, these soldiers!" he grumbled to his wife. "They leave that to you pacifists," replied the lady, brightly. "Pack o poltroons!" scolded the old warrior. "One can respect the Archdeacon at least because he has the courage of his opinions. But this chap!" Yet if Liberalism as a whole was finding grace at last, Labour in the East-end remained obdurate, as only a mollusc can; and Labour was gaining power for all men to see. In the general elections of 1910, indeed, the two Conservative candidates, Stanley Bessemere, East, and Mr. Glynde, West, romped home. The Colonel was neither surprised nor deceived by the results of the elections. He knew now that in modern England in the towns at all events, among the rising generation, there were few Conservative working men--though there were millions who might and in fact did vote for Conservative candidates; and not many Radicals--apart from a leaven of sturdy middle-aged survivors of the Gladstonian age. The workers as a whole, it was clear, as they grew in class-consciousness, were swinging slow as a huge tide, and almost as unconscious, towards the left. But they were not articulate; they were not consistent; they changed their labels as they changed their clothes, and as yet they steadfastly refused to call themselves Socialists. Indeed, in spite of the local Conservative victory, the outstanding political feature of the moment, apart from the always growing insurgency of Woman, was the advance of Labour, as the Colonel and many other thoughtful observers noted. He began, moreover, to see that behind the froth, the foam, and arrant nonsense of the extreme section of the movement, there was gathering a solid body of political philosophy. The masses were becoming organised--an army, no longer a rabble; with staff, regimental officers, plan of campaign, and an always growing discipline. And, whether you agreed with it or not, there was no denying that the Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission was a political portent. When Joe Burt came up to Undercliff, as he sometimes did, to smoke and chat with the Colonel, Mrs. Lewknor, a whole-hearted Tory, would attack him on the tyranny of Trade Unions with magnificent fury.