It was a desperate chance, but the necessity was urgent, so, shutting himself up for an hour, he wrote the better part of a speech which he entrusted to his friend to prepare.

George, having a good memory, laboriously learned it by heart, and clutching the friendly paper and whole-heartedly abusing his chief, he set out grimly to his fate.
Promptly at the hour of eight he was deposited at the door of the Masonic Hail in Allerfoot.

The place seemed full, and a nervous chairman was hovering around the gate.

News of the great man's defection had already been received, and he was in the extremes of nervousness.

He greeted George as a saviour, and led him inside, where some three hundred people crowded a small whitewashed building.