attack on the present management and future prospects of
the _Clarion_ followed, together with the threat that the writer would
do what in him lay henceforward to promote the cause of a certain rival
organ lately started, among such working men as he might be able to
influence.

"_Brute_! jealous, impracticable brute!" exclaimed Wharton aloud, as he
stood chafing and smoking by the window. All the difficulties which this
open breach was likely to sow in his path stood out before him in clear
relief.

"_Personal_ leadership, there is the whole problem," he said to himself
in moody despair. "Can I--like Parnell--make a party and keep it
together? Can I through the _Clarion_--and through influence _outside_
the House--coerce the men _in_ the House? If so, we can do something,
and Lady Cradock will no longer throw me her smiles. If not the game is
up, both for me and for them. They have no cohesion, no common
information, no real power. Without leaders they are a mere set of
half-educated firebrands whom the trained mind of the country humours
because it must, and so far as they have brute force behind them.
Without _leadership_, _I_ am a mere unit of the weakest group in the House.
Yet, by Jove! it looks as though I had not the gifts."

And he looked back with passionate chagrin on the whole course of his
connection with Wilkins, his unavailing concessions and small
humiliations, his belief in his own tact and success, all the time that
the man dealt with was really slipping out of his hands.

"Damn the fellow!" he said at last, flinging his cigarette away. "Well,
that's done with. All the same, he would have liked that Midland job! He
has been hankering after a strike there for some time, and might have
ranted as he pleased. I shall have the satisfaction of informing him he
has lost his opportunity. Now then--who to send? By Jove! what about
Miss Boyce's friend?"

He stood a moment twisting the quill-pen he had taken up, then he
hastily found a sheet of paper and wrote:

"Dear Miss Boyce,--It is more than a year since I have heard of you, and
I have been wondering with much interest lately whether you have really
taken up a nursing life. You remember speaking to me of your friends the
Cravens? I come across them sometimes at the Venturist meetings, and
have always admired their ability. Last year I could do nothing
practical to meet your wishes. This year, however, there is an opening
on the _Clarion_, and I should