he time were devoted to the preparation of a series of
three addresses on the subject of Land Reform, which were to be
delivered in October to the delegates of a large number of working-men's
clubs from all parts of London. So strong was Hallin's position among
working-men reformers, and so beloved had been his personality, that as
soon as his position towards the new land nationalising movement, now
gathering formidable strength among the London working men, had come to
be widely understood, a combined challenge had been sent him by some
half-dozen of the leading Socialist and Radical clubs, asking him to
give three weekly addresses in October to a congress of London
delegates, time to be allowed after the lecture for questions and
debate.

Hallin had accepted the invitation with eagerness, and was throwing an
intensity of labour into the writing of his three lectures which often
seemed to his poor sister to be not only utterly beyond his physical
strength, but to carry with it a note as of a last effort, a farewell
message, such as her devoted affection could ill endure. For all the
time he was struggling with cardiac weakness and brain irritability
which would have overwhelmed any one less accustomed to make his account
with illness, or to balance against feebleness of body a marvellous
discipline of soul.

Lord Maxwell was still alive, and Hallin, in the midst of his work, was
looking anxiously for the daily reports from Aldous, living in his
friend's life almost as much as in his own--handing on the reports, too,
day by day to Marcella, with a manner which had somehow slipped into
expressing a new and sure confidence in her sympathy--when she one
evening found Minta Hurd watching for her at the door with a telegram
from her mother: "Your father suddenly worse. Please come at once." She
arrived at Mellor late that same night.

On the same day Lord Maxwell died. Less than a week later he was buried
in the little Gairsley church. Mr. Boyce was then alarmingly ill, and
Marcella sat in his darkened room or in her own all day, thinking from
time to time of what was passing three miles away--of the great house in
its mourning--of the figures round the grave. Hallin, of course, would
be there. It was a dripping September day, and she passed easily from
moments of passionate yearning and clairvoyance to worry herself about
the damp and the fatigue that Hallin must be facing.

Since then she had heard occasionally from M