which met their gaze beyond.

They stood on the upper side of a little rectangular "square," at the
lower edge of which, some fifty yards away, were gathered possibly
thirty or forty jostling and noisy men. Facing them, standing on a
carriage-block at the curb, stood a cool little man obviously engaged in
making a speech. The commonness of the men and the rough joviality of
their mood were the more accentuated by the supreme dignity of the
orator. He was a very small man, with pink cheeks and eye-glasses,
beautifully made and still more beautifully dressed; and for all their
boisterous "jollying" his auditors appeared rather to like him than the
contrary.

The men from the _Cypriani_ crossed the square and came up with the
merry-making Hunstonians. Varney's gaze went round the circle of faces
and saw inefficiency, shiftlessness, and failure everywhere stamped
upon them. Suddenly his wandering eye was arrested by a face of quite a
different sort. Directly opposite stood the eccentric young man of the
row-boat, watching the show out of listless eyes whose expression never
changed.

"On that horse-block," said Peter, raising his voice to carry above an
outburst of catcalls and allegedly humorous comment, "stands the Hunston
Reform Movement. Giving 'em a ripping talk, too--all out of Bryce, Mill,
and the other fellows."

But at that moment, as luck had it, the oratory came to a sudden end. A
sportive bull-pup, malevolently released by some one in the crowd,
danced up to the horse-block, barking joyfully, and made a lightning
dive for the spellbinder's legs. The spellbinder dexterously