, were racing about, like so many
shadowy demons, pelting each other and their teachers with the 'dips'
which, as the buildings were new, and not yet fitted for gas, had been
provided to light them through their three R's. In the middle stood the
two philanthropists they were in search of, freely bedaubed with
tallow, one employed in boxing a boy's ears, the other in saving a huge
ink-bottle whereon some enterprising spirit had just laid hands by
way of varying the rebel ammunition. Murray Edwardes, who was in his
element, went to the rescue at once, helped by Robert. The boy-minister,
as he looked, had been, in fact, 'bow' of the Cambridge eight, and
possessed muscles which men twice his size might have envied. In three
minutes he had put a couple of ringleaders into the street by the scruff
of the neck, relit a lamp which had been turned out, and got the rest of
the rioters in hand. Elsmere backed him ably, and in a very short time
they had cleared the premises.

Then the four looked at each other, and Edwardes went off into a shout
of laughter.

'My dear Wardlaw, my condolences to your coat! But I don't believe if
I were a rough myself I could resist "dips." Let me introduce a
friend--Mr. Elsmere--and if you will have him, a recruit for your work.
It seems to me another pair of arms will hardly come amiss to you!'

The short red-haired man addressed shook hands with Elsmere,
scrutinizing him from under bushy eyebrows. He was panting and
beplastered with tallow, but the inner man was evidently quite
unruffled, and Elsmere liked the shrewd Scotch face and gray eyes.

'It isn't only a pair of arms we want,' he remarked dryly, 'but a bit of
science behind them. Mr. Elsmere, I observed, can use his.'

Then he turned to a tall, affected-looking youth with a large nose and
long fair hair, who stood gasping with his hands upon his sides, his
eyes, full of a moody wrath, fixed on the wreck and disarray of the
schoolroom.

'Well, Mackay, have they knocked the wind out of you? My friend and
helper,--Mr. Elsmere. Come and sit down, won't you, a minute? They've
left us the chairs, I perceive, and there's a spark or two of fire. Do
you smoke? Will you light up?'

The four men sat on chatting some time, and then Wardlaw and Elsmere
walked home together. It had been all arranged. Mackay, a curious,
morbid fellow, who had thrown himself into Unitarianism and charity
mainly out of opposition to an orthodox and bourgeois family