"The moment seemed a favourable one for laying the proposal before the members of the Government," went on Hampden, unmoved, "though, of course, I do not expect an answer now. On the assumption that we are returned to power, it is our intention to create a new department to exist as long as the conditions require it, and certainly as long as the next Parliament. Its work will be largely conciliation, and it will deal with the disorganisation of labour. In the same confidential spirit with which you have spoken of the future without reserve, I may say that should I be called upon to form a Ministry, I shall--and I have the definite acquiescence of my colleagues--offer the Presidentship of the Board to Mr Cecil Brown ... the office of Parliamentary Secretary to Mr Tirrel." If Hampden had wished to surprise, he certainly succeeded. The open laugh that greeted the first name was cut off as suddenly and completely as the light is cut off when the gas-tap is turned, by the gasp that the second name evoked. To many among them the offer had been the merest party move; Cecil Brown's name a foregone conclusion. The addition of Tirrel, whose rather brilliant qualities and quite fantastic sense of honour they were prone to lose sight of behind his vehement battle-front, was stupefying. It was Tirrel who was the first to break the silence of astonishment on this occasion, not even waiting, with characteristic impetuousness, for his chief-designate to offer an opinion. "You say that you do not want an answer now, Sir John, but you may have it, as far as I am concerned," he cried, with the defiant air that marked his controversial passages. "From any other man of your party the proposal would have been an insult; from you it is an amiable mistake. _You_ do not think that you can buy us with the bribe of office, but you think that there is no further party work for us to do: that Socialism in England to-day is dead. I tell you, Sir John Hampden, with the absolute conviction of an inspired truth, that it will triumph yet. You will not see it; I may not see it, but it is more likely that the hand of Time itself should fail than that the ideals to which we cling should cease to draw men on. We, who are the earliest pioneers of that untrodden path, have made many mistakes; we are paying for them now; but we have learned. Some of our mistakes have brought want and suffering to thousands of your class, but for hundreds of years your mistakes have been bringing starvation and misery to millions of our class. From your presence we go down again into the weary years of bondage, to work silently and unmarked among those depths of human misery from which our charter springs. I warn you, Sir John Hampden--for I know that the warning will be dead and forgotten before the year is out--that our reign will come again; and when the star of a new and purified Socialism arises once more on a prepared and receptive world the very forces of