[Sidenote: John Burns's penetration.]

Not even yet do levity and faction surrender the final hope of doing
mischief. At the door of the House, as I have already said, stands a
Scotch Liberal doing the work of Tory Whips, and attempting to capture
young members who have smoked their pipes or drank their tea, or
wandered up and down the terrace by the peaceful Thames--all unconscious
of the great and grim drama going forward upstairs. He catches hold of
John Burns, among others--a sturdy son of the soil ready to receive, as
might be hoped, anything which calls itself sturdy and independent
Radicalism. Over honest John's manly form there is a fight; but he has a
strong, clear, practical head over his muscular body, and at once
penetrates to the underlying issue, and walks into Gladstone's lobby.

[Sidenote: The division.]

At last the division is nearing its close, and the excitement--perhaps,
because it is so painfully repressed--has grown until it has almost
become unbearable. Whenever there is a close division like this, several
things happen which never happen on other occasions. Members gather
round the doors of the division lobbies, listening to the tellers as
they count one, two, three, four, and so on, in the mechanical voice of
the croupiers, bidding the gamblers to play with the dice of death. The
Whips also are narrowly watched to see which return first to the House,
for the first return means which lobby has been sooner exhausted, and
the lobby sooner exhausted is necessarily the smaller lobby, and,
therefore, the lobby of the minority. Mr. Marjoribanks, who has told for
the Government at the door of the Tory lobby, has returned to the House
first. That's a good sign. But still, if there be a majority, what is it
going to be?--disastrously near defeat, or near enough to moral strength