Wilberforce Williams had raised self-effacement to a fine art, yet somehow he had got there just the same. While the Really Great Talents slept, the Slippery One had climbed upwards in the night. And once in office, although the fact was by no means clear to the world at large, he was there “for keeps.” He had got in, nobody quite knew how. With equal truth that formula applied to the question of his getting out. If Mr. Williams said little as to the prospects of his Bill, as to its character he was reticence itself. The most accomplished Cat-Jumpers, herded in solid phalanx, tier upon tier, on both sides of the House could get hardly a word out of him. Slippery Sam was not exactly beloved, but since the Blackhampton Election his stock as a political entity had risen. To have spiked the U. P. batteries so neatly at such a fateful moment clearly meant that W. W. had known how to read the skies. Every professional legislator now began to feel in his bones that one of the much dread periodical reactions was at hand. Could it be that the power of the U. P. was on the wane? It had promised the Millennium and was doing its best to deliver the goods, but it was so like human nature to be in rather a hurry in these little matters. The price of all commodities, “hot air” excepted, was at an immoral height; unemployment, starvation, suppressed communism were rife on every hand; taxation was cruel, the depreciation of securities went on and on; an all-pervading sense of disaster struck ever nearer the surface. The Millennium was surely coming, all the morning and evening journals said so, but in the meantime life for the ordinary rate-payer was growing impossible. Yet, said the noble army of Cat-Jumpers, with Blackhampton East now before their eyes, the hour of deliverance is near. Hence, the Anti-Trust Law! Hence, Down with the U. P.! Hence, the pyramids! In the present condition of Denmark it was unwise to take anything for granted, but one fact was clear. The country was in bonds, but a recent event had shown that it was possible for its chains to be shed. If deliverance was to come, however, it was now felt that the task would devolve upon one man. John Endor, in the opinion of the insiders, was that man. His recent victory was a torch. It focused every eye in the world of politics upon him. No one else could have won that battle, at any rate in just that way; and it became at once a talisman for all the spirits by nature free, whom the degrading conditions of modern political life were galling beyond endurance. All things were possible now for John Endor. The dragon which was crushing the life out of the nation was not invulnerable. And one of the very few daily newspapers outside the Ring which had any authority, crystallized the feeling now uppermost in every perceptive mind when it came out one evening with its famous cartoon “The New Perseus.” XLI