s I to
know?" said Hugh.

Jack Lever, who was leaning against the table, came over and sat on the
settee beside the girls.

"Mark didn't play fair; he never said a word about it till Mat and Hugh
had told your secret, so to get even I'll tell you his."

Amid the girls' applause and Mark's protests he commenced.

"You ought to know Phillip Gamer, the first Torchlight, ran away from
home when he was twelve to join the Salvation Army. He was a drummer
boy in the ranks until a detective, hired by his dad, shadowed him and
brought him home, but last year at school he said the Army had helped
him to a view of a question which had puzzled him all his life. His
mother declared that even as a baby, he had protested in lusty tones
against silver-backed hair-brushes and perfumed soaps, and when the
nurse perambulated him in the park, a bunch of ragged, barefoot kids
would surround the beaming youngster in his silk-lined carriage. There
might be a dozen other baby vehicles round, which they wouldn't think
of touching, nor of speaking to those tony babies, but they seemed to
overlook Phil's frills and laces and took to him like brothers.

"At school he refused one of the high-priced rooms, because it would
separate him in a way from the boys he wished most to meet, the boys
who thought things out for themselves. Phil's coming knocked out that
feeling,--a sort of caste--which divided the rich scholars from the
poor; his room was a meeting point--the plane upon which they became
fellow-men. Here the Torchlights came into being. Our counter-sign,
The Brotherhood of Man, and though there was only one of us who
intended to work as a minister in the slums, each was pledged to
individual effort in his own locality.

"Mark and I were the only Torchlights from this town, and the first
thing I did when I got home was to break my bones in a runaway, and
that put me out of the race."

"But it didn't keep him from doing a lot for the boys," said Mark.
"Every week we all visited him and had a jolly evening with games,
reading and singing and a dandy lunch. At first Jack's people rather
scouted the idea of entertaining the Stony Road gang. The first night
one of them cut a fine china plate in two, and another shied egg-shells
over his shoulder against the wall. Mrs. Lever was horrified, but we
begged her to wait and give us another trial."

"Now mother and the rest are completely won over and help us lots. I
believe I would hav