The Dictator and Hamilton stood in Ericson's study, waiting to receive a deputation. The Dictator had agreed to receive this deputation from an organisation of working men. The deputation desired to complain of the long hours of work and the small rate of pay from which English artisans in many branches of labour had to suffer. Why they had sought to see him he could not very well tell—and certainly if it had been left to Hamilton, whose mind was set on sparing the Dictator all avoidable trouble, and who, moreover, had in his heart of hearts no great belief in remedy by working-men's deputation, the poor men would probably not have been accorded the favour of an interview. But the Dictator insisted on receiving them, and they came; trooped into the room awkwardly; at first seemed slow of speech, and soon talked a great deal. He listened to all they had to say, and put questions and received answers, and certainly impressed the deputation with the conviction that if his Excellency the ex-Dictator of Gloria could not do anything very much for them, his heart at least was in their cause. He had an idea in his mind of something he could do to help the over-oppressed English working man—and that was the reason why he had consented to receive the deputation.

The spokesman of the deputation was a gaunt and haggard-looking man. The dirt seemed ingrained in him—in his hands, his eyebrows, his temples, under his hair, up to his very eyes. He told a pitiful story of long work and short pay—of hungry children and an over-tasked wife. He told, in fact, the story familiar to all of us—the 'chestnut' of the newspapers—the story which the busy man of ordinary society is not expected to trouble himself by reading any more—supposing he ever had read it at all.

The Dictator, however, was not an ordinary society man, and he had been a long time away from England, and had not had his attention turned to these social problems of Great Britain. He was therefore deeply interested in the whole business, and he asked a number of questions, and got shrewd, keen answers sometimes, and very rambling answers on other occasions. The deputation was like all other deputations with a grievance. There was the fanatic burning to a white heat, with the inward conviction of wrong done, not accidentally, but deliberately, to him and to his class. There was the prosaic, didactic, reasoning man, who wanted to talk the whole matter out himself, and to put everybody's arguments to the test, and to prove that all were wrong and weak and fallible and unpractical save himself alone. There was the fervid man, who always wanted to dash into the middle of every other man's speech. There was the practical man, who came with papers of figures and desired to make it all a question of statistics. There was the 'crank,' who disagreed with everything that everybody else said or suggested or could possibly have said or suggested on that or any other subject. The first trouble of the Dictator was to get at any commonly admitted appreciation of facts. More than once—many times indeed—he had to interpose and explain that he personally knew nothing of the subjects they were discussing; that he only sought for information; and that he begged them if they could to agree among themselves as to the actual realities which they wished to bring under his notice. Even when he had thus adjured them it was not easy for him to get them to be all in a story. Poor fellows! each one of them had his own peculiar views and his own peculiar troubles too closely pressing on his brain. The Dictator was never impatient—but he kept asking himself the question: 'Suppose I had the power to legislate, and were now called upon by these men and in their own interests to legislate, what on their own showing should I be able to do?'

More than once, too, he put to them that question. 'Admitting your grievances—admitting the justice, the reason, the practical good sense of your demands, what can I do? Why do you appeal to me? I am no legislator. I am a proscribed and banished man from a country which until lately most of you had never heard of. What would you have of me?'

The spokesman of the deputation could only answer that they had heard of him as of one who had risen to supreme position in a great far-off country, and who had always concerned himself deeply with the interest of the working classes.

'Will that,' he asked, 'get me one moment's audience from an English official department?'

No, they did not suppose it would; they shook their heads. They could not help him to learn how he was to help them.

The day was cold and dreary. No matter though the season was still supposed to be far remote from winter, yet the look of the skies was cruelly depressing, and the atmosphere was loaded with a misty chill. Ericson's heart was profoundly touched. He saw in his mind's eye a country glowing with soft sunshine—a country where even winter came caressingly on the people living there; a country with vast and almost boundless spaces for cultivation; a country watered with noble rivers and streams; a country to be renowned in history as the breeder of horses and cattle and the grower of grain; a country well qualified to rear and feed and bring up in sunny comfort more than the whole mass of the hopeless toilers on the chill English fields and in the sooty English cities. His mind was with the country with which he had identified his career—which only wanted good strong hands to convert her into a country of practical prosperity—which only needed brains to open for her a history that should be remembered in all far-stretching time. He now excused himself for what had at one moment seemed his weakness in consenting to receive a deputation for which he could do nothing. He found that he had something to say to them after all.

The Dictator had a sweet, strong, melodious voice. When he had heard them all most patiently out, he used his voice and said what he had to say. He told them that he had directly no right to receive them at all, for, as far as regards this country, there was absolutely nothing he could do for them. He was not an official, not a member of Parliament, not a person claiming the slightest influence in English public life. Nor even in the country of his adoption did he reckon for much just now. He was, as they all knew, an exile; if he were to return to that country now, his life would, in all probability, be forfeit. Yet, in God's good pleasure, he might, after all, get back some time, and, if that should be, then he would think of his poor countrymen, in England. Gloria was a great country, and could find homes for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Englishmen. There—he had no scheme, had never thought of the matter until quite lately—until they had asked him to receive their deputation. He had nothing more to say and nothing more to ask. He was ashamed to have brought them to listen to a reply of so little worth in any sense; but that was all that he could tell them, and if ever again he was in a position to do anything, then he could only say that he hoped to be reminded of his promise.

The deputation went away not only contented but enthusiastic. They quite understood that their immediate cause was not advanced and could not be advanced by anything the Dictator could possibly have to say. But they had been impressed by his sincerity and by his sympathy. They had been deputed to wait on many a public official, many a head of a department, many a Secretary of State, many an Under-Secretary. They were familiar with the stereotyped official answers, the answers that assured them that the case should have consideration, and that if anything could be done—well, then, perhaps, something would be done. Possibly no other answer could have been given. The answer of the unofficial and irresponsible Dictator promised absolutely nothing; but it had the musical ring of sincerity and of sympathy about it, and the men grasped strongly his strong hand, and went away glad that they had seen him.

The Dictator did not usually receive deputations. But he had a great many requests from deputations that they might be allowed to wait on him and express their views to him. He was amazed sometimes to find what an important man he was in the estimation of various great organisations. Ho was assured by the committee of the Universal Arbitration Society that, if he would only appear on their platform and deliver a speech, the cause of universal arbitration would be secured, and public war would go out of fashion in the world as completely as the private duel has gone out of fashion in England. Of course, he was politely pressed to receive a deputation on behalf of several societies interested on one side or the other of the great question of Woman's Suffrage. The teetotallers and Local Optionists of various forms solicited the favour of a talk with him. The trade associations and the licensed victuallers eagerly desired to get at his views. The letters he received on the subject of the hours of labour interested him a great deal, and he tried to grapple with their difficulties, but soon found he could make little of them. By the strenuous advice of Hamilton he was induced to keep out of these complex English questions altogether. Ericson yielded, knowing that Hamilton was advising him for the best; but he had a good deal of the Don Quixote in his nature; and having now a sort of enforced idleness put upon him, he felt a secret yearning for some enterprise to set the world right in other directions than that of Gloria.

There was a certain indolence in Ericson's nature. It was the indolence which is perfectly consistent with a course of tremendous and sustained energy. It was the nature which says to itself at one moment, 'Up and do the work,' and goes for the work with unconquerable earnestness until the work is done, and then says, 'Very good; now the work is done, let us rest and smoke and talk over other things.' Nature is one thing; character is another. We start with a certain kind of nature; we beat it and mould it, or it is beaten and moulded for us, into character. Even Hamilton was never quite certain whether Nature had meant Ericson for a dreamer, and Ericson and Fortune co-operating had hammered him into a worker, or whether Nature had moulded him for a worker, and his own tastes for contemplation and for reading and for rest had softened him down into a dreamer.

'The condition of this country horrifies me, Hamilton,' he said, when left alone with his devoted follower. 'I don't see any way out of it. I find no one who even professes to see any way out of it. I don't see any people getting on well but the trading class.'

'But the trading class?' Hamilton asked, with a quiet smile.

'You mean that if the trading class are getting on well the country in the end will get on well?'

'It would look like that,' Hamilton answered; 'wouldn't it? This is a country of trade. If our trade is sound, our heart is sound.'

'But what is becoming of the land, what is becoming of the peasant? What is becoming of the East End population? I don't see how trade helps any of these. Read the accounts from Liverpool, from Manchester, from Sheffield, from anywhere: nothing but competition and strikes and general misery. And, look here, I can't bear the idea of everything in life being swallowed up in the great cities, and the peasantry of England totally disappearing, and being succeeded by a gaunt, ragged class of half-starved labourers in big towns. Take my word for it, Hamilton, a cursed day has come when we see that day.'

'What can be done?' Hamilton asked, in a kind of compassionate tone—compassion rather for the trouble of his chief than for the supposed national tribulation. Hamilton was as generous-hearted a young fellow as could be, but his affections were more evidenced in the concrete than in the abstract. He had grown up accustomed to all these distracting social questions, and he did not suppose that anything very much was likely to come of them—at any rate, he supposed that if anything were to come of them it would come of itself, and that we could not do much to help or hinder it. So he was not disposed to distress himself much about these social complications, although, if he felt sure that his purse or his labour could avail in any way to make things better, his help most assuredly would not be wanting. But he did not like the Dictator to be worried about such things. The Dictator's work, he thought, was to be kept for other fields.

'Nothing can be done, I suppose,' the Dictator said gloomily. 'But, my dear Hamilton, that is the trouble of the whole business. That does not help us to put it out of our minds—it only racks our minds all the more. To think that it should be so! To think that in this great country, so rich in money, so splendid in intellect, we should have to face that horrible problem of misery and poverty and vice, and, having stared at it long enough, simply close our eyes, or turn away and deliver it as our final utterance that there is nothing to be done!'

'Anyhow,' Hamilton said, 'there is nothing to be done by you and me. It's of no use our wearing out our energies about it.'

'No,' the Dictator assented, not without drawing a deep breath; 'but if I had time and energy I should like to try. We have no such problems to solve in Gloria, Hamilton.'

'No, by Jupiter!' Hamilton exclaimed, 'and therefore the very sooner we get back there the better.'

The Dictator sent a compassionate and even tender glance at his young companion. He had the best reason to know how sincere and self-sacrificing was Hamilton's devotion to the cause of Gloria; but he could not doubt that just at present there was mingled in the young man's heart, along with the wish to be serving actively the cause of Gloria, the wish also to be free of London, to be away from the scene of a bitter disappointment. The Dictator's heart was deeply touched. He had admired with the most cordial admiration the courage, the noble self-repression, which Hamilton had displayed since the hour of his great disappointment. Never a word of repining, never the exhibition in public of a clouded brow, never any apparent longing to creep into lonely brakes like the wounded deer—only the man-like resolve to put up with the inevitable, and go on with one's work in life just as if nothing had happened. All the time the Dictator knew what a passionately loving nature Hamilton had, and he knew how he must have suffered. 'I am old enough almost to be the lad's father,' he thought to himself, 'and I could not have borne it like that.' All this passed through his mind in a time so short that Hamilton was not able to notice any delay in the reply to his observation.

'You are right, boy,' the Dictator cheerily said. 'I don't believe that you and I were meant for any mission but the redemption of Gloria.'

'I am glad, to hear you say so,' Hamilton interposed quickly.

'Had you ever any doubt of my feelings on that subject?' Ericson asked with a smile.

'Oh, no, of course not; but I don't always like to hear you talking about the troubles of these old worn-out countries, as if you had anything to do with them or were born to set them right. It seems as if you were being decoyed away from your real business.'

'No fear of that, boy,' the Dictator said. 'What I was thinking of was that we might very well arrange to do something for the country of our birth and the country of our adoption at once, Hamilton—by some great scheme of English colonisation in Gloria. If we get back again I should like to see clusters of English villages springing up all over the surface of that lovely country.'

'Our people are so wanting in adaptability,' Hamilton began.

'My dear fellow, how can you say that? Who made the United States? What about Australia? What about South Africa?'

'These were weedy poor chaps, these fellows who were here just now,' Hamilton suggested.

'Good brain-power among some of them, all the same,' the Dictator asserted. 'Do you know, Hamilton, say what you will, the idea catches fire in my mind?'

'I am very glad, Excellency; I am very glad of any idea that makes you warm to the hope of returning to Gloria.'

'Dear old boy, what is the matter with you? You seem to think that I need some spurring to drive me back to Gloria. Do you really think anything of the kind?'

'Oh, no, Excellency, I don't—if it comes to that. But I don't like your getting mixed up in any manner of English local affairs.'

'I see, you are afraid I might be induced to become a candidate for the House of Commons—or, perhaps, for the London County Council, or the School Board. I tell you what, Hamilton: I do seriously wish I had an opportunity of going into training on the School Board. It would give me some information and some ideas which might be very useful if we ever get again to be at the head of affairs in Gloria.'

Hamilton was a young man who took life seriously. If it were possible to imagine that he could criticise unfavourably anything said or done by his chief, it would be perhaps when the chief condescended to trifle about himself and his position. So Hamilton did not like the mild jest about the School Board. Indeed, his mind was not at the moment much in a condition for jests of any kind, mild or otherwise.

'I don't fancy we should learn anything in the London School Board that would be of any particular service to us out in Gloria,' he said protestingly.

'Right you are,' the Dictator answered, with a half-pathetic smile. 'I need you, boy, to recall me to myself, as the people say in the novels. No, I do not for a moment feel myself vain enough to suppose that the ordinary member of the London School Board could at a stroke put his finger within a thousand miles of Gloria on the map of the world—Mercator's Projection, or any other. And yet, do you know, I have odd dreams in my head of a day when Gloria may become the home and the shelter of a sturdy English population, whom their own country could endow with no land but the narrow slip of earth that makes a pauper's grave.'