The remarks were McEwart's. Lankester turned a sarcastic eye upon him. "Don't you be unjust, my boy. Ferrier's one of the smartest Parliamentary hands England has ever turned out" At this Barton roused. "What's the good of that?" he asked, with quiet ferocity, in his strong Lancashire accent. "What does Ferrier's smartness matter to us? The Labor men are sick of it! All he's asked to do is to run _straight!_--as the party wants him to run." "All right. _Ad leones!_ Ferrier to the Lords. I'm agreeable. Only I don't know what Marsham will say to it." Lankester pushed back a very shabby pot-hat to a still more rakish angle, buttoning up an equally shabby coat the while against the east wind. He was a tall fair-haired fellow, half a Dane in race and aspect: broad-shouldered, loose-limbed, with a Franciscan passion for poverty and the poor. But a certain humorous tolerance for all sorts and conditions of men, together with certain spiritual gifts, made him friends in all camps. Bishops consulted him, the Socialists claimed him; perhaps it was the East End children who possessed him most wholly. Nevertheless, there was a fierce strain in him; he could be a fanatic, even a hard fanatic, on occasion. Marsham did not show much readiness to take up the reference to himself. As he walked beside the others, his slender elegance, his handsome head, and fashionable clothes marked him out from the rugged force of Barton, the middle-class alertness of McEwart, the rubbed apostolicity of Lankester. But the face was fretful and worried. "Ferrier has not the smallest intention of going to the Lords!" he said, at last--not without a touch of impatience. "That's the party's affair." "The party owes him a deal too much to insist upon anything against his will." "Does it!--_does_ it!" said Lankester. "Ferrier always reminds me of a cat we possessed at home, who brought forth many kittens. She loved them dearly, and licked them all over--tenderly--all day. But by the end of the second day they were always dead. Somehow she had killed them all. That's what Ferrier does with all our little Radical measures--loves 'em all--and kills 'em all." McEwart flushed. "Well, it's no good talking," he said, doggedly; "we've done enough of that! There will be a meeting of the Forward Club next week, and we shall decide on our line of action." "Broadstone will never throw him over." Lankester threw another glance at Marsham. "You'll only waste your breath." Lord Broadstone was the veteran leader of the party, who in the event of victory at the polls would undoubtedly be Prime Minister. "He can take Foreign Affairs, and go to the Lords in a blaze of glory," said McEwart. "But he's _impossible!_--as leader in the Commons. The party wants grit--not dialectic."