They filled the many benches opposite to him; they filled, with equal fervour and multitudinousness, the benches on his own side.

It was remarkable to see the thoroughness with which the Tories had mustered their forces; but the spectacle of the Liberal Unionists' Benches was even still more remarkable, for there was not a seat vacant; they had all come--those renegade and venomous deserters from the Liberal ranks--to do their utmost against the Liberal party and their mighty Liberal leader.

And what support had Lord Spencer against all these foes--before him, around him--on all sides of him?
On the benches immediately behind him there was a small band of men--not forty all told--looking strangely deserted, skeleton-like, even abashed in all their loneliness and isolation.

These were the friends--few but faithful--amid all the hundreds, who alone had a word of cheer for Lord Spencer in a long and trying speech he had to address to his irreconcilable foes.

But if there was any tremor in him as he stood up in surroundings so trying, I was unable to detect it.