o
in time set up a congregation and a service of my own, is there really
room for you and me? Should I not be infringing on a work I respect a
great deal too much for anything of the sort?'

Edwardes laughed the notion to scorn.

The parish, as a whole, contained 20,000 persons. The existing churches,
which, with the exception of St. Wilfrid's, were miserably attended,
provided accommodation at the out-side for 3,000. His own chapel held
400, and was about half full.

'You and I may drop our lives here,' he said, his pleasant friendliness
darkened for a moment by the look of melancholy which London work seems
to develop even in the most buoyant of men, 'and only a few hundred
persons, at the most, be ever the wiser. Begin with us--then make your
own circle.'

And he forthwith carried off his visitor to the point from which, as it
seemed to him, Elsmere's work might start, viz., a lecture-room half a
mile from his own chapel, where two helpers of his had just established
an independent venture.

Murray Edwardes had at the time an interesting and miscellaneous staff
of lay-curates. He asked no questions as to religious opinions, but
in general the men who volunteered under him--civil servants, a young
doctor, a briefless barrister or two--were men who had drifted from
received beliefs, and found pleasure and freedom in working for and
with him they could hardly have found elsewhere. The two who had planted
their outpost in what seemed to them a particularly promising corner of
the district were men of whom Edwardes knew personally little. 'I have
really not much concern with what they do,' he explained to Elsmere,
'except that they got a small share of our funds. But I know they want
help, and if they will take you in, I think you will make something of
it.'

After a tramp through the muddy winter streets, they came upon a new
block of warehouses, in the lower windows of which some bills announced
a night-school for boys and men. Here, to judge from the commotion round
the doors, a lively scene was going on. Outside, a gang of young roughs
were hammering at the doors, and shrieking witticisms through the
keyhole. Inside, as soon as Murray Edwardes and Elsmere, by dint of good
humor and strong shoulders, had succeeded in shoving their way through
and shutting the door behind them, they found a still more animated
performance in progress. The schoolroom was in almost total darkness;
the pupils, some twenty in number