o was the builder, and they pored over
immense sheets of coloured plans that lay on the table, and Mr Orgreave
made marks and even sketches on the plans, and the fat man objected to
his instructions, and Mr Orgreave insisted, "Yes, yes!" And it seemed
to Edwin as though the building of the chapel stood still while Mr
Orgreave cogitated and explained; it seemed to Edwin that he was in the
creating-chamber. The atmosphere of the shed was inexpressibly romantic
to him. After the fat man had gone Mr Orgreave took a clothes-brush
off a plank that had been roughly nailed on two brackets to the wall,
and brushed Edwin's clothes, and Edwin brushed Mr Orgreave, and then
Mr Orgreave, having run his hand through the brush, lightly brushed his
hair with it. All this was part of Edwin's joy.

"Yes," he said, "I think the idea of that arch is splendid."

"You do?" said Mr Orgreave quite simply and ingenuously pleased and
interested. "You see--with the lie of the ground as it is--"

That was another point that Edwin ought to have thought of by himself--
the lie of the ground--but he had not thought of it. Mr Orgreave went
on talking. In the shop he had conveyed the idea that he was
tremendously pressed for time; now he had apparently forgotten time.

"I'm afraid I shall have to be off," said Edwin timidly. And he made a
preliminary movement as if to depart.

"And what about those specifications, young man?" asked Mr Orgreave,
drily twinkling. He unlocked a drawer in the rickety table. Edwin had
forgotten the specifications as successfully as Mr Orgreave had
forgotten time. Throughout the remainder of the day he smelt imaginary
mortar.

VOLUME ONE, CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

A DECISION.

The next day being the day of rest, Mrs Nixon arose from her nook at
5:30 a.m. and woke Edwin. She did this from good-nature, and because
she could refuse him nothing, and not under any sort of compulsion.
Edwin got up at the first call, though he was in no way remarkable for
his triumphs over the pillow. Twenty-five minutes later he was crossing
Trafalgar Road and entering the school-yard of the Wesleyan Chapel. And
from various quarters of the town, other young men, of ages varying from
sixteen to fifty, were converging upon the same point. Black night
still reigned above the lamplights that flickered in the wind which
precedes the dawn, and the mud was frozen. Not merely had these young
men to be afoot and abroad, but they had to