_ forget; for you said the truth that time. I _was_ an
old grampus, or a fool, if you like, and I'm not much better now.
However, good-bye, dear boy, and take care of her, for there's not
another like her in all England."

"Except one," murmured young Guy, as he squeezed his friend's hand and
quietly attached an old slipper to their cab as they drove away.
Thereafter he swaggered off to a certain familiar cottage to talk over
the wedding with one whom _he_ considered the sweetest lass in all the
town.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

"RESCUE THE PERISHING."

Proverbial philosophy asserts that the iron should be struck when it is
hot. I sympathise with proverbial philosophy in this case, but that
teacher says nothing whatever about striking the iron when it is cold;
and experience--at least that of blacksmiths--goes to prove that cold
iron may be struck till heat is evolved, and, once heated, who knows
what intensity of incandescence may be attained?

I will try it. My hammer may not be a large one. A sledge-hammer it
certainly is not. Such as it is I wield it under the impulse of great
heat within me, and will direct my blows at the presumably cold iron
around. I say presumably,--because if you, good reader, have not been
subjected to the same influences with myself you cannot reasonably be
expected to be even warm--much less white-hot.

The cause of all this heat was Dr Barnardo's splendid meeting held
recently in the Royal Albert Hall. I came home from that meeting
incandescent--throwing off sparks of enthusiasm, and eagerly clutching
at every cold or lukewarm creature that came in my way with a view to
expend on it some of my surplus heat!

The great Albert Hall filled is enough of itself to arouse enthusiasm,
whatever the object of the gathering may be. Ten thousand human beings,
more or less, swarming on the floor, clustering on the walls, rising
tier above tier, until in dim distance the pigmy throng seems soaring up
into the very heavens, is a tremendous, a solemn, a heart-stirring
sight, suggestive--I write with reverence--of the Judgment Day. And
when such an assembly is convened for the purpose of considering matters
of urgent importance, matters affecting the well-being of multitudes,
matters of life and death which call for instant and vigorous action,
then the enthusiasm is naturally intensified and needs but little
hammering to rouse it to the fiercest glow.

It was no ordinary gathering this--no m