“Burglary’s a bad trade,” said Joshua.

“Only one I’ve got at my fingers’ ends, governor,” laughed the thief; “and starvation is a worse go than quod.”

“Well, till you’ve learned a better, share with us,” said Joshua.  So now we had a reformed burglar and a reformed prostitute in our little circle.

“It is what Christ would have done,” said Joshua, when he was remonstrated with.

But the police did not see it.  Wherefore, “from information received,” Joshua and I were called up before the master, and had our dismissal from the shop, and we found ourselves penniless in the wilds of London.  But Joshua was undisturbed.  He told both Joe and Mary that he would not forsake them, come what might.

It was a hard time, and, bit by bit, everything we possessed passed over the pawnbroker’s counter, even to our tools.  But when we were at the worst Joshua received a letter enclosing a five-pound note, “from a friend.”  We never knew where it came from, and there was no clue by which we could guess.  Immediately after both Joshua and I got a job, and Joe and Mary still bided with us.

Joshua’s life of work and endeavour brought with it no reward of praise or popularity.  It suffered the fate of all unsectarianism, and made him to be as one man in the midst of foes.  He soon began to see that the utmost he could do was only palliative and temporary.  So he turned to class organisation as something more hopeful than private charity.  When the International Workingmen’s Association was formed, he joined it as one of its first members; indeed, he mainly helped to establish it.  And though he never got the ear of the International, because he was so truly liberal, he had some little influence, and what influence he had ennobled their councils as they have never been ennobled since.

One evening Joe Traill, who had been given a situation, came into the night school staggering drunk, and made a commotion, and though Joshua quieted him, after being struck by him, the police, attracted by the tumult, came up into the room and marched Joshua and myself off to the police station, where we were locked up for the night.  As we had to be punished, reason or none, we were both sent to prison for a couple of weeks next morning.

Well, Christ was the criminal of his day!

Such backslidings and failures at that of Joe Traill were among the greatest difficulties of Joshua’s work.  Men and women whom he had thought he had cleansed and set on a wholesome way of living, turned back again to the drink and the deviltry of their lives, and the various sectarians who came along all agreed that the cause of his failures was—­Joshua was not a Christian!

Next a spasmodic philanthropist, Lord X., struck up a friendship with Joshua, who, he said, wanted, as a background, a man of position.  This led to Joshua’s first introduction into a wealthy house of the upper classes, and the luxury and lavishness almost stupefied him.  Lady X. liked Joshua, and felt he was a master-spirit, but when she came to Church Court, and found out what Mary had been, she went away offended, and we saw her no more.