t like wildfire,
and the town all but doubled itself in my time. Nothing like a little
mustard and pepper if you want to make things go."

"I prophesy that Grey Town will subdue even you. This is a very sleepy
atmosphere. No man remains vigorous for over six months; you will soon
be slumbering like the rest of us."

"I shall be dead first," he answered. "You don't know me."

"Nor you Grey Town. You are not our first reformer; we have had numbers
of them, and we have destroyed them without remorse," said Kathleen.

From the window of the room they could look across fields now green in
the freshness of early summer, across the racecourse and park, to where
Grey Town climbed irregularly towards St. Mary's Church. There it lay, a
town whose streets were only partly made; where sanitation had halted in
its most primitive stages; where little attempt had been made to assist
the beauties of nature. Yet Grey Town was, in the distance, a pretty
spot, embowered in green trees, the blue smoke resting over it, and in
the distance the great blue ocean. Large buildings and small hovels,
well-cared for gardens and filthy back yards, imposing factories and
dilapidated shops--there was surely work here for an energetic reformer.
But Kathleen knew the strength of vested rights, the strength of
contented indolence; above all, the bitter tongue of scandal that was
ever ready to destroy a prophet. Others had fought with Grey Town and
failed; why not Denis Quirk?

"No," he answered, reading her thoughts. "Grey Town has been waiting for
me, and to-morrow I start on Grey Town. See here! This town should be a
city. We need a few more cities, and Grey Town shall be one of the
first. Given half a dozen factories and an improved system of
railways----."

"Factories!" laughed Kathleen, her eyes straying towards the town and
its open sea-front, where only a small peninsula of rock protected the
bay from the south-west gales. "You are dreaming, Mr. Quirk?"

"Nothing is impossible nowadays. Why no factories in Grey Town? Shall
Melbourne possess all the good things? Let us provide for ourselves and
for other people, and bring money to the town. Factories Grey Town must
have to make agricultural implements, to turn our wool into blankets,
our wheat into flour, our milk into butter. Factories and an up-to-date
paper."

Mrs. Quirk had listened in a dazed manner to this conversation. It
delighted her to sit and listen to her son, just as it did on