The vicar was rapidly becoming convinced that he had made a mistake, but he had gone so far that he could hardly at once back out, so he resolved to make one final attempt to carry his point, in which he would obtain the aid of a brother parson. This device would, he thought, enable him to retreat gracefully from his false position. The man he summoned to his help was a Leicestershire rector, whose consuming zeal had induced him to become a sort of itinerant evangelist of the allotment system. What could be better than to get such a brilliant apostle to address a mass meeting at Ashbrook. With the failure of a prophet to convince landlords and farmers, Codling felt that his weak-kneedness might be justified. The Rev. Henry Slocome's services were therefore secured, and notices of the coming meeting were posted on the church doors and in the neighbourhood for a fortnight in advance. As there was no building large enough, the meeting was to be held beneath the old elm on Ashbrook Green. The news excited great interest amongst the labourers who, on the Saturday evening in July when the meeting was held, gathered to the number of about 200 men and women from all the villages in the neighbourhood. A strange sight they presented as they stood with upturned faces around the waggon on which the vicar, the parish clerk, and the speaker of the evening were perched. Grey wizened faces, watery eyes, blueish hungry-like lips these men and women had--a weird, hopeless-looking, toil-bent congregation of the have-nots. Young men were stunted and shrivelled with labour and want, and old men were gaunt and twisted with exposure, overwork, and rheumatism. Verily if allotments were to do these people good, the work of the self-chosen missionary, who had come to set the country on fire, was not to be contemned. But it boded ill for the success of his efforts that never a landed proprietor in the district gave the meeting his countenance. Just, however, as business began the crowd of labourers was recruited by from 20 to 30 young farmers and farmers' sons. These stood apart, ranging themselves on the left of the meeting near the churchyard wall, and rather behind the waggon. They were too far off to hear well, but near enough for interruptions, and they accordingly indulged frequently in groans, ironical laughter, or jeers at the labourers. Two of the Pembertons were there, the two who had succeeded their father at Whitbury farm, and there also was hulking young Turner from Warwick, half drunk as usual.