He picked up a pen as he finished speaking, signed the paper that had been passed to him first by reason of his position at the table, and thrust it vehemently from him to his neighbour. Mr Chadwing held up his pen to the light to make sure that it contained no obstruction on so important an occasion, signed his name with clerkly precision, and then carefully wiped his pen on the lining of his coat. Cecil Brown looked down with the faint smile that covered his saddest moments as he added the slender strokes of his signature, and Tirrel dashed off the ink-laden characters of his with tightened lips and a sombre frown. Consciously or unconsciously every man betrayed some touch of character in that act. Mr Vossit made a wry grimace as he passed the paper on; and Mr Guppling, with an eye on a possible line in Fame's calendar, snapped his traitorous pen in two and cast the pieces dramatically to the ground. When the last signature had been written, some of the members stood up to take their leave at once, but Hampden and Tirrel made a simultaneous motion to detain them. The master of the house gave way to his guest. "I am not up to cry over spilled milk," said Tirrel with his customary bluntness. "What is done, is done. We shall carry out the terms, Sir John Hampden, and you and your party will be in office in a week. But you are not merely taking over the administration of a constitution: you are taking over a defeated country. I ask you, as the head of your party and the future Premier, to do one thing, and I ask it entirely on my own initiative, and without the suggestion or even the knowledge of my friends or colleagues. Let your first act be to publish a general amnesty. It does not touch me.... But there have been things on both sides. You may perhaps know my views; I would have crushed your League by strong means when it was possible if I had had my way. None the less, there is not the most shadowy charge that could hang over me to-day, and for that reason it is permissible for me to put in this petition. The nation is shattered, torn, helpless. Do not look too closely into the past ... pacify."