name; but you are making pretty free with mine. What is it all about?"
"You are Lord Lamerton, I presume?" said the orator, looking at the dismayed faces of those within the radiance of the lantern. "The saying goes that listeners hear no good of themselves. Perhaps it may be true in this case."
"I have not been listening, but I have caught a sentence or two; and I have no idea of allowing any one taking liberties with my name behind my back. If you have anything to say about me, say it to my face. What is all this about?"
"What is all this about?" repeated the orator. "His noble lordship, the Right Honourable Giles Inglett, Baron Lamerton, asks, What is all this about?" In a lower tone charged with oratorical irony, "What is all this about?" Mr. Welsh looked round on his audience. "Having shut up his manganese mine, and reduced a hundred men to destitution, broken up their homes, obliged them to wander over the face of the earth in quest of work, without houses of their own, without bread to put into the mouths of their children, forced to sell their poor sticks of furniture down to the baby's cradle—he asks, What is all this about? After having torn down a house over the head of a poor widow, and bespattered her grey hairs with gore, he asks, What is all this about? After having deprived a father of his only child, and an orphan of her mother, he has the effrontery—yes—in the face of his lordship I repeat the word, I repeat it in the boldness which my righteous indignation gives me—the effrontery to ask, What is all this about? Possibly, when Cain saw his brother, his younger brother Abel, lying at his feet, with fractured skull and crushed limbs, he also asked, What is all this about? I will not pretend to know where his lordship has been all day; but I do say that, as an Englishman, as a Christian, as a man, when he was about to render desolate the heart
