nge in the social conditions of the sex. It makes no matter that
she will never reap the benefit; it counts not at all that she will
never touch the spoil. The lines must be filled up. When she falls,
there must be others to take her place. The bugle has sounded in the
hearts of thousands of women of her type, and they have had to obey
its shrilling call.

Stand for half an hour in the morning at any of the main termini of
London's traffic-ways, and you will see them in their thousands. They
little know the law they are obeying; they little realize the cause
for which they are working, or the effect it will produce. In another
book from this pen it has been declared that the words of
Maeterlinck--"the spirit of the hive"--are an inspired phrase. Here,
in these conditions, with no need to don the protecting gauze, you
may see its vivid illustration, as only the great draughtsmanship
of life can illustrate the wondrous schemes of Nature.

For two years Sally Bishop had been one amongst them. For two years
she had caught her tram at Kew Bridge in the morning and her tram
again at Hammersmith at night. Only her Sundays and her Saturday
afternoons were free, except for those two wonderful weeks in the
summer and the yawning gaps in the side of the year which are known
as National holidays.

When--where did the bugle sound that called Sally to her
conscription? What press-gang of circumstances waylaid her, in what
peaceful wandering of life, and bore her off to the service of her
sex?

There is a little story attached to it--one of those slight, slender
threads of incident that go to form a shadow here or a light there
in the broad tapestry of the whole.

The Rev. Samuel Bishop was rector of the parish church in the little
town of Cailsham, in Kent. This was Sally's father. There never was
a meeker man; there never was a man more truly fitted with those
characteristics of piety which are essentially and only Christian.
With charity he was filled, though he had but little to bestow--his
whole intellect was subordinated to his faith--and with the light
of hope his little eyes glittered so long as one straw lay floating
on the tide.

This is the man whom Christianity demands, and this the very man whom
Christianity crushes like a slug under the heel. He is bound to be
a failure--bound to hope too much, be blind with faith, and give,
out of charity, with the witless hand that knows not where to bestow.

For ten years he