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170 deep rumble; "I confess I do not understand it. Are we assembled here to-night, comrades, to listen to private quarrels and stupid talk?"

A murmur of approval came from the others, and the speaker stood up waving his arms.

"I know not what this young man has done: I care less. In Russia such trifles matter not. He has the appearance of a bourgeois, therefore he must die. Did we not kill thousands—aye, tens of thousands of his kidney, before we obtained the great freedom? Are we not going to do the same in this accursed country?" His voice rose to the shrill, strident note of the typical tub-thumper. "What is this wretched man," he continued, waving a hand wildly at Hugh, "that he should interrupt the great work for one brief second? Kill him now—throw him in a corner, and let us proceed."

He sat down again, amidst a further murmur of approval in which Hugh joined heartily.

"Splendid," he murmured. "A magnificent peroration. Am I right, sir, in assuming that you are what is vulgarly known as a Bolshevist?"

The man turned his sunken eyes, glowing with the burning fires of fanaticism, on Drummond.

"I am one of those who are fighting for the freedom of the world," he cried harshly, "for the right to live of the proletariat. The workers were the bottom dogs in Russia till they killed the rulers. Now—they rule, and the money they earn goes into their own pockets, not those of incompetent snobs." He flung out his arms. He seemed to shrivel up