nt_,
dear aunt, I am your devoted nephew,

HUGH FLAXMAN.'

'_On probation!_'

Flaxman chuckled as he sent off the letter.

He stayed because he was too restless to be anywhere else, and because
he loved the Elsmeres for Rose's sake and his own. He thought moreover
that a cool-headed friend with an eye for something else in the world
than religious reform might be useful just then to Elsmere, and he was
determined at the same time to see what the reformer meant to be at.

In the first place, Robert's attention was directed to getting
possession of the whole block of buildings, in which the existing school
and lecture-rooms took up only the lowest floor. This was a matter of
some difficulty, for the floors above were employed in warehousing goods
belonging to various minor import trades, and were held on tenures of
different lengths. However, by dint of some money and much skill, the
requisite clearances were effected during September and part of October.
By the end of that month all but the top floor, the tenant of which
refused to be dislodged, fell into Elsmere's hands.

Meanwhile, at a meeting held every Sunday after lecture--a meeting
composed mainly of artisans of the district, but including also Robert's
helpers from the West, and a small sprinkling of persons interested in
the man and his work from all parts--the details of 'The New
Brotherhood of Christ' were being hammered out. Catherine was generally
present, sitting a little apart, with a look which Flaxman, who now knew
her well, was always trying to decipher afresh--a sort of sweet
aloofness, as though the spirit behind it saw, down the vistas of the
future, ends and solutions which gave it courage to endure the present.
Murray Edwardes too was always there. It often struck Flaxman afterwards
that in Robert's attitude towards Edwardes at this time, in his constant
desire to bring him forward, to associate him with himself as much as
possible in the government and formation of the infant society, there
was a half-conscious prescience of a truth that as yet none knew, not
even the tender wife, the watchful friend.

The meetings were of extraordinary interest. The men, the great majority
of whom had been disciplined and moulded for months by contact with
Elsmere's teaching and Elsmere's thought, showed a responsiveness, a
receptivity, even a power of initiation which often struck Flaxman with
wonder. Were these the men he had seen in the