an stood blinking in the glare.

The policeman, ignoring Hilda, glanced at Edwin, and touched his cap.

"His friends hadn't ought to let him out like this, sir. Just look at
him." He sneered, and added: "I'm on point duty. If you ask me, I
should say his friends ought to take him home." He said this with a
peculiar mysterious emphasis, and looked furtively at the louts for
moral support in sarcasm. They encouraged him with grins.

"He must be got on to the platform, somehow," said Hilda, and glanced at
Edwin as if counting absolutely on Edwin. "That's what he's come for.
I'm sure it means everything to him."

"Aye!" the old man droned. "I was Super when we had to teach 'em their
alphabet and give 'em a crust to start with. Many's the man walking
about in these towns i' purple and fine raiment as I taught his letters
to, and his spellings, aye, and his multiplication table,--in them
days!"

"That's all very well, miss," said the policeman, "but who's going to
get him to the platform? He'll be dropping in a sunstroke afore ye can
say knife."

"Can't we?" She gazed at Edwin appealingly.

"Tak' him into a pub!" growled the collier, audacious.

At the same moment two rosettes bustled up authoritatively. One of them
was the burly Albert Benbow. For the first time Edwin was conscious of
genuine pleasure at the sight of his brother-in-law. Albert was a born
rosette.

"What's all this? What's this? What is it?" he asked sharply. "Hello!
What? Mr Shushions!" He bent down and looked close at the old man.
"Where you been, old gentleman?" He spoke loud in his ear.
"Everybody's been asking for you. Service is well-nigh over, but ye
must come up."

The old man did not appear to grasp the significance of Albert's
patronage. Albert turned to Edwin and winked, not only for Edwin's
benefit but for that of the policeman, who smiled in a manner that
infuriated Edwin.

"Queer old stick!" Albert murmured. "No doing anything with him. He's
quarrelled with everybody at Turnhill. That's why he wanted to come to
us. And of course we weren't going to refuse the oldest Sunday school
teacher in th' Five Towns. He's a catch... Come along, old gentleman!"

Mr Shushions did not stir.

"Now, Mr Shushions," Hilda persuaded him in a voice exquisitely mild,
and with a lovely gesture she bent over him. "Let these gentlemen take
you up to the platform. That's what you've come for, you know."

The transformation