The cheers rose in a fine crescendo to a noise which would have made a German orchestra playing Wagner's music sound restrained and soothing. The people were no doubt very glad that Mrs. Eames had reached the end of her speech, but there must have been something more than simple relief behind their cheering. The ancestors of these fishermen, their grandfathers and great grandfathers a century or so before, had been noted smugglers, famous even in an age when everyone in the south of England smuggled. The deadening tyranny of a hundred years of law and order had tamed and cowed the Bunces and Whittles of to-day, but deep down in them was the old spirit. Mrs. Eames had appealed to sub-conscious selves with atavistic memories. The surprises of the evening were not at an end. When Mrs. Eames sat down James Hinton rose. He held in his hand a large piece of paper and an observer in the audience might have supposed that he intended to read a speech. But Hinton had a spirit above manuscript and it was very soon evident that the paper contained something far more interesting and more amazing than the notes of any speech. "A pageant," he said gravely and with quiet dignity, "a great pageant, a pageant displaying one of the most glorious epochs of our national story----" Cheers from such of the audience as had any voices left stopped him for a moment. "Such a pageant as we contemplate cannot be run without the expenditure of considerable sums in preliminary expenses." At this point of the speech--a point which must be reached in a speech made by someone at every meeting convened for a good purpose--the audience usually becomes uncomfortable and often begins to melt away. But the Hailey Compton people were apparently prepared to face even a subscription list. They cheered again. The reason of this confidence was apparent almost at once. The subscription list had been handed round days before and was already complete. "I have therefore much pleasure, madam," Hinton went on, bowing low to Mrs. Eames, "in presenting to you a guarantee for the sum of £51 2s. 6d. together with a list of the names of the guarantors of what I may, perhaps, call the Pageant Fund." Mrs. Eames gasped. In all her experience of Hailey Compton--perhaps in all the experience of all vicars and vicars' wives of all country parishes--no such thing as this had ever happened. With the utmost difficulty she had managed to extract sixpences and threepences from unwilling people for the expenses of "Macbeth" and "Othello." For "Hamlet" she expected to have to pay entirely out of her own pocket. Yet here, unasked for and unsought, was more than fifty pounds offered to her.