The case which I prepared for O’Rane was, I fancy, not unpersuasive; but I had no chance of putting it forward. If the inheritance three years before had been a nine-days’-wonder, the news of the renunciation seemed likely to cause, in some quarters at least, a nine weeks’ consternation. I blundered into the wake of a deputation and entered the library in time to hear the venerable Bishop of Poplar pleading for men and women whom O’Rane had kept alive for more than two years. Thousands, the bishop asserted, were on the verge of starvation; before the winter, they would be reckoned by tens of thousands. While Mr. O’Rane’s arguments might be unassailable in normal times, the aftermath of an unprecedented war demanded abnormal remedies. “From half-a-dozen abnormally long purses?,” O’Rane enquired wearily. “I want _every one_ to give and _every one_ to feel it. If your few rich men go on strike, what will happen?” The bishop was too old a controversialist to be trapped: “You would like me to say that some one will come forward in their place. I wish I could believe it. When the pinch becomes unbearable, the government will provide relief out of the taxpayer’s pocket. But, before that relief comes, many people will be dead; there will be rioting . . .” “It’s a nice question already how long we can keep ’em sweet,” interposed an anxious voice on behalf of the National Unemployment Committee. “It’s a nice question whether you’ll get anything done till they turn nasty,” retorted a small man with a Cardiff accent. The bishop smiled and explained that, to make his deputation representative, he had included his friend Mr. Griffiths, with whose well-known bolshevist views we were no doubt already acquainted. “What would you think, Mr. O’Rane,” he continued, “if I threw the bread of London into the Thames on the plea that it would be better for the people to eat cake? You are pronouncing sentence of death on the weakest section of the community.” In the silence that followed I turned from O’Rane’s tortured eyes to the apostle of “bolshevism”. This was certainly my first, though not my last, meeting with the organizer and leader of “Griffiths’ Heroes”. I had expected a figure cast in the heroic mould, for there was a touch of the genius in the originality of his ideas and a hint of the commander in the obedience which he secured in carrying them out. Most strongly marked, however, was the fanatic; and his blended passion and cruelty made him something less than human. In thinking of him after all these months I am always reminded of an angry ferret. He was very small, very hirsute, very quick; though his eyes were brown, they seemed to shine red; and, as he looked scornfully round O’Rane’s warm library, I felt that his little teeth were seeking a hand to bite.