The meeting at Chester-le-Street was no different from a hundred
others held in England at the same time. It was illegal, and yet
the authorities dared not to pronounce it so. It might prove
dangerous to those taking part in it. Lawyers said that the leaders
laid themselves open to the charge of high treason. In this
assembly as in others there were wirepullers--men playing their own
game, and from the safety of the rear pushing on those in front.
With one of these we have to do. With his mistake Fate raised the
curtain, and on the horizon of several lives arose a cloud no bigger
than a man's hand.

Geoffrey Horner lived before his time, insomuch as he was a
gentleman-Radical. He was clever, and the world heeded not. He was
brilliant, well educated, capable of great achievements, and the
world refused to be astonished. Here were the makings of a
malcontent. A well-born Radical is one whom the world has refused
to accept at his own valuation. A wise man is ready to strike a
bargain with Fate. The wisest are those who ask much and then take
half. It is the coward who asks too little, and the fool who
imagines that he will receive without demanding.

Horner had thrown in his lot with the Chartists in that spirit of
pique which makes a man marry the wrong woman because the right one
will have none of him. At the Chester-le-Street meeting he had
declared himself an upholder of moral persuasion, while in his heart
he pandered to those who knew only of physical force and placed
their reliance thereon. He had come from Durham with a contingent
of malcontents, and was now returning thither on foot in company
with the local leaders. These were intelligent mechanics seeking
clumsily and blindly enough what they knew to be the good of their