uld no more be
held back than the eventual express railway engine once Hero of
Alexandria had made his little experiments with a steam kettle. About
the benefit of either there may be two opinions, but none about their
inevitability.

At the time of the Forster Act the school board was a new and thrilling
thing, one more sign of the approaching day when reform should have made
a perfect world. Very famous and great people did not scorn to sit upon
it, and the whole movement was considered in the light of a benevolent
revolution. Ishmael, seeing with the eyes of his age and time, tingled
to the thought. It was the first occasion on which the cup of ambition
had been held before him, and to him it was momentous. He said little,
but did not try and dissuade the Parson when he declared he would take
the matter to the authorities, and he listened to Flynn for the rest of
that evening with less the sensation of the outsider, the mere onlooker,
than ever before.

Reform, reform, was Daniel's theme, especially the reform of the whole
voting system. He was a keen advocate of increased franchise and the
ballot, and here the Parson differed from him. The Parson, in his heart
of hearts, would have taken the vote away from most of the people he
knew; he would certainly not have enlarged its scope, and as to the
system of the secret ballot-box, he was too used to knowing what all his
parishioners did with their votes and to guiding their hands.... There
were steps he could not take with Flynn; but Ishmael, listening, began
to waver in his allegiance towards the Parson. His own nature would have
supported the idea of secret voting even if his progressive spirit, the
eager spirit of youth that can put all right, had not urged him to be on
the side of things new. Already he had once or twice found himself
failing to support the Parson's advocacy of Derby, and in debate upheld
Gladstone against Disraeli. This evening it dawned upon him that Boase
was not infallible, that times had moved past him.... The dear old
Parson, of course he would always feel just the same about him; but
after all he had stayed down here too long and was getting old ... he
could not be expected to know as much as younger men.

It was only towards the end of the evening that Ishmael's complacency
received a slight prick that made it waver. Dan had told of an Irishman
who, after winning a case against his landlord, had hidden behind a
hedge and shot him on the w