rom
seeing Hurd the day before the execution. I knew then that all was over
for me at Mellor.

"As for the wretched break-down of everything--of all my schemes and
friendships here--I had better not speak of it. I feel that I have given
these village-folk, whom I had promised to help, one more reason to
despair of life. It is not pleasant to carry such a thought away with
one. But if the tool breaks and blunts, how can the task be done? It can
be of no use till it has been re-set.

"I should like to know how your plans prosper. But I shall see your
paper and follow what goes on in Parliament. For the present I want
neither to write nor get letters. They tell me that as a probationer I
shall spend my time at first in washing glasses, and polishing
bath-taps, on which my mind rests!

"If you come across my friends of whom I have spoken to you--Louis,
Anthony, and Edith Craven--and could make any use of Louis for the
_Labour Clarion_, I should be grateful. I hear they have had bad times
of late, and Louis has engaged himself, and wants to be married. You
remember I told you how we worked at the South Kensington classes
together, and how they made me a Venturist?

"Yours very truly,

"MARCELLA BOYCE."

Wharton laid down the letter, making a wry mouth over some of its
phrases.

"'_Put us both wrong with honour and conscience.' 'One more reason for
despair of life'--'All was over for me at Mellor_'--dear! dear!--how
women like the big words--the emphatic pose. All those little odds and
ends of charities--that absurd straw-plaiting scheme! Well, perhaps one
could hardly expect her to show a sense of humour just then. But why
does nature so often leave it out in these splendid creatures?"

"Hullo!" he added, as he bent over the table to look for a pen; "why
didn't that idiot give me these?"

For there, under an evening paper which he had not touched, lay a pile
of unopened letters. His servant had forgotten to point them out to him.
On the top was a letter on which Wharton pounced at once. It was
addressed in a bold inky hand, and he took it to be from Nehemiah
Wilkins, M.P., his former colleague at the Birmingham Labour Congress,
of late a member of the _Labour Clarion_ staff, and as such a daily
increasing plague and anxiety to the _Clarion's_ proprietor.

However, the letter was not from Wilkins. It was from the secretary of
a Midland trades-union, with whom Wharton had already been in
communication. The un