safe rule: Hesitate to strike--strike hard.

Sir John Pleydell was a member of that Parliament which had treated
the Charter with contempt. He was one of those who had voted with
the majority against the measures it embodied.

In addition to these damnatory facts, he was a local Tory of some
renown--an ambitious man, the neighbours said, who wished to leave
his son a peerage.

To the minds of the rabble this magnate represented the tyranny
against which their protest was raised. Geoffrey Horner looked on
him as a political opponent and a dangerous member of the winning
party. The blow was easy to strike. Horner hesitated--at the cross
roads of other lives than his own--and held his tongue.

The suggestion of the unknown humorist in the crowd commended itself
to the more energetic of the party, who immediately turned towards
the by-road leading to Dene Hall. The others--the minority--
followed as minorities do, because they distrusted themselves. Some
one struck up a song with words lately published in the 'Northern
Liberator' and set to a well-known local air.

The shooting party assembled at Dene Hall was still at the dinner
table when the malcontents entered the park, and the talk of coverts
and guns ceased suddenly at the sound of their rough voices. Sir
John Pleydell, an alert man still, despite his grey hair and drawn,
careworn face, looked up sharply. He had been sitting silently
fingering the stem of his wineglass--a habit of his when the ladies
quitted the room--and, although he had shot as well as, perhaps