e Citizens'_ funds. The effect upon the
men themselves was wholly admirable. Every one of them was a genuinely
unemployed worker, and the way they all took their training was
marvellous.

I think Constance Grey was as pleased as I was with the praise we won
from John Crondall over this. A little while before this time I should
have felt jealous pangs when I saw her sweet face lighten and glow at a
word of commendation from John Crondall. But my secretaryship was
teaching me many things. No other woman could ever mean to me one tithe
of all that Constance Grey meant. Of that I was very sure. To think of
such women as handsome Beatrice Blaine or Sylvia Wheeler, in a vein of
comparison, was for me like comparing the light of a candle in a distant
window with the moon herself. The mere sound of Constance's voice
thrilled me as nothing else could. But I am glad to remember now that I
no longer knew so small an emotion as jealousy where she was concerned.

John Crondall was the strongest man of all the men I knew; Constance was
the sweetest woman. Here was a natural and fitting comradeship. I
thought of my chief as the mate of the woman I loved. My heart ached at
times. But I am glad and proud that I had no jealousy.

X

SMALL FIGURES ON A GREAT STAGE

I, loving freedom and untried,
No sport of every random gust,
Yet being to myself a guide,
Too blindly have reposed my trust;
And oft, when in my heart was heard
Thy timely mandate, I deferred
The task, in smoother walks to stray,
But thee I now would serve more strictly, if I may.

_Ode to Duty._

It has often been said of the Canadian preachers that they conferred the
gift of eloquence upon all their converts. It is certainly a fact that
long before Stairs and Reynolds had traversed half the length of
England, disciples of theirs were winning converts to "British
Christianity"--as the religion of Duty and simple living came to be
called--in every county in the kingdom.

In the same way, the progress of _The Citizens'_ recruiting campaign was
made marvellously rapid and triumphant in character by reason of the
enthusiastic activity of all new adherents. During the second of John
Crondall's great meetings in Birmingham, for example, we received
telegraphic greeting from the chairmen presiding over one hundred and
ninety-eight other meetings then being held for the furtherance of ou