18 STRAY-AWAYS 



accounts; and patriot oratory may belabour the 

 name of Balfour with highest-piled epithet, without 

 altering by a hair's breadth the humorousncss which 

 in some way has lingered into rigidity about the lips 

 of the dead man. The room is not darkened, but the 

 small window tempers the light to a most fitting 

 uncertainty, not tampering with the expression 

 shadowed under pent -house brows, but softening it 

 to its habitual strong attentiveness. 



The hazy sunshine outside has struck on a red 

 dahlia at the window, and the brilliant note of colour 

 draws the eye to it out of the grave obscurity of the 

 room. It was at this window that the delegate used 

 to sit after his day's work, studying indefatigably the 

 newspaper utterances of his party, American and 

 otherwise, and forming thereon opinions of the crude- 

 ness which might be expected from an eager mind 

 unfurrowed by any ploughshare of opposite opinion. 

 But it is not difficult to imagine that such as he might 

 occasionally raise his eyes from the columns of 

 vituperation, and look out over his gooseberry-bushes 

 and dahlias to where the cloud of rooks wheels in the 

 sunset over adjacent demesne lands and woods, with 

 feelings of a mixed and bewildered kind. Many 

 incidents of his life rising up from the backgi'ound 

 of these woods would parry irrationally the cut and 

 thrust of Socialism; perhaps even such trivial 

 memories as the wooden swords and other playthings 

 made in bygone days for certain children of the 

 vituperated class would for a time confuse the political 

 outlook, and leave the Delegate at length floundering 

 a little in the problem of the old order versus the new. 

 Such flounderings can only be guessed at; whether 

 they were many or few, he did not, so far as can be 

 known, trouble his neighbours with the recital of 

 them; but by a solitary circumstance some glimpse 



