Tressady turned, and saw an old man, a Jew, with a long greyish beard, coming slowly to the front of the platform. His eyes were black and deep, sunk under white brows; he was decently but poorly dressed; and he began to speak with a slight German accent, in an even, melancholy voice, rather under-pitched, which soon provoked the meeting. He was vociferously invited to speak up or sit down; and at the first interruption he stopped timorously, and looked towards the Chair. An elderly, grey-haired woman was presiding--no doubt to mark the immense importance of the Bill for the women of the East End. She came forward at the man's appeal. "My friends," she said quietly, "you let this man speak, and don't you be hard on him. He's got a sad story to tell you, and he won't be long about it. You give him his chance. Some of you shall have yours soon." Up. The speaker was the paid secretary of one of the women's unions; but she had been a tailoress for years, and had known a tragic life. Once, at a meeting where some flippant speaker had compared the reality and frequency of "starvation" in London to the reality and frequency of the sea serpent, Tressady had seen her get up and, with a sudden passion, describe the death of her own daughter from hardship and want, with the tears running down her cheeks. Her appeal to the justice of the meeting succeeded, and the old man was allowed to go on. It soon appeared that he had been put up by one of the tailoring unions to denounce the long hours worked in some of the Whitechapel and Spitalfields workshops. His H facts were appalling. But he put them badly, with a dull, stumbling voice, and he got no hold on the meeting at all till suddenly he stepped forward, paused,--his miserable face working, his head turning from if side to side,--and finally said, with a sharp change of note: "And now, if you please, I will tell you how it was about Isaac--my brother Isaac. It was Mr. Jacobs "--he looked round, and pointed to the tradeunion secretary who had been speaking before him--"Mr. Jacobs it was that put it in my mind to come here and tell you about Isaac. For the way Isaac died was like this. He and I were born in Spitalfields; he wasn't one of your greeners--he was a reg'lar good worker, first-rate general coat-hand, same as me. But he got with a hard master. And last winter season but one there came a rush. And Isaac must be working six days a week--and he must be working fourteen hours a day--and, more'n that, he must be doing his bastes overtime, two hours one time, and an hour or so, perhaps, another; anyway, they made it up to half a day--eight hours and more in the week. _You_ know how they reckon it." He stopped, grinning feebly. The trade-unionists about the platform shouted or groaned in response. The masters round the door, with their "greeners," stood silent.