But it was not until he sat with Thomas Garret in his dark lodgings, hearing the rush of the river beneath him, looking into the fiery eyes of the priest, and hearing the fiery words which fell from his lips, that Dalaber thoroughly understood to what he had pledged himself when first he had uttered the fateful words, “I will be a member of the Association of Christian Brothers.”

True, Clarke had, on their way to town, spoken to him of a little community, pledged to seek to distribute the life-giving Word of God to those who were hungering for it, and to help each in his measure to let the light, now shrouded beneath a mass of observances which had lost their original meaning to the unlettered people, shine out in its primitive brilliance and purity; but Dalaber had only partially understood the significance of all this.

Clarke was the man of thought and devotion.  His words uplifted the hearts of his hearers into heavenly places, and seemed to create a new and quickened spirituality within them.  Garret was the man of action.  He was the true son of Luther.  He loved to attack, to upheave, to overthrow.  Where Clarke spoke gently and lovingly of the church, as their holy mother, whom they must love and cherish, and seek to plead with as sons, that she might cleanse herself from the defilement into which she had fallen, Garret attacked her as the harlot, the false bride, the scarlet woman seated upon the scarlet beast, and called down upon her and it alike the vials of the wrath of Almighty God.

And the soul of Dalaber was stirred within him as he listened to story after story, all illustrative of the corruption which had crept within the fold of the church, and which was making even holy things abhorrent to the hearts of men.  He listened, and his heart was hot as he heard; he caught the fire of Garret’s enthusiasm, and would then and there have cast adrift from his former life, thrown over Oxford and his studies there—­and flung himself heart and soul into the movement now at work in the great, throbbing city, where, for the first time, he found himself.

But when he spoke words such as these Garret smiled and shook his head, though his eyes lighted with pleasure.

“Nay, my son; be not so hot and hasty.  Seest thou not that in this place our work for the time being is well-nigh stopped?

“Not for long,” he added quickly, whilst the spark flew from his eyes—­“not for long, mind you, ye proud prelates and cardinal.  The fire you have lighted shall blaze in a fashion ye think not of.  The Word of God is a consuming fire.  The sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, pierces the heart and reins of man; and that sword hath been wrested from the scabbard in which it has rusted so long, and the shining of its fiery blade shall soon he seen of all men.

“No,” added the priest, after a moment’s pause to recover himself and take up the thread of his discourse; “what was done at Paul’s Cross yesterday was but a check upon our work.  The last convoy of books has been burnt—­all, save the few which we were able to save and to bide beneath the cellar floor.  The people have been cowed for a moment, but it will not last.  As soon seek to quench a fire by pouring wax and oil upon it!”