There are times--especially when the small hours of the morning are breaking, and Labby is in his most genial mood--when he is ready to declare that, after all, he is only a Conservative in disguise, and that his Radicalism is merely put on for the purpose of amusing and catching the groundlings.

As a matter of fact, Labby is by instinct one of the most thorough Radicals that ever breathed.

His Radicalism, it is true, is of the antique pattern.

He is an individualist without compromise or concession.

Life to him is to the strongest; he has no faith save in the gospel of the survival of the fittest.