“But only for a time,” he said, “I shall see you all again.  And you will hear of me!”

“Ay, ay, we’ll hear of ye—­for we’ll take the papers in just for news of yer!” said Ben, with a rough laugh which covered his deeper feelings, “And mebbe ye’ll come back afore we’s all drownded!”

And so with a few more kindly words they left him, and he stood at the gate watching their stalwart figures disappear down the different windings of the crooked and picturesque little street.

“God bless them all!” he murmured, “They have taught me many a grand lesson!”

The next day he took his quiet departure in the early morning before the village folks were up and stirring,—­and a month later he addressed a large meeting in one of the poorest and most densely populated districts of London on “The Ethics of Christ versus the Clergy”, which attracted universal attention and created an enormous sensation.  His book began to sell in thousands where it had previously sold in hundreds, and he earned sufficient from the profits of the sale to keep him going in the simple fashion of clothes and food to which he had strictly disciplined himself, so that he felt free to plunge into the thick of the fight.  And he straightway did so.  His name became a terror to liars, and a clarion sound of alarm in the ears of social hypocrites.  He wrote another book which obtained even a larger hearing than the first—­and he spoke to the people on an average once a week, wherever he could assemble them together.  All his addresses were made gratuitously, and he soon resembled a sort of blazing torch in the darkness, to which the crowds rushed for light and leading.  In the midst of the sensation his writings and orations were creating, a noble lord, with several Church livings in his gift, asked him to stand for Parliament, and offered to pay the expenses of his election.  At first Aubrey was sufficiently tempted by the offer to pause hesitatingly on the verge of acceptance, but twenty-four hours’ hard thinking promptly pulled him together.  “No,” he said—­“I see what you mean!  You and your party wish to tie my hands—­to gag my mouth, and make me as one of yourselves—­no, I will not consent to it.  I will serve the people with all my life and soul!—­but not in your way!”

And to avoid further discussion he went straight out of England for a time, and travelled through Europe, making friends everywhere, and learning new phases of the “Christian Dispensation” at every turn in his road.  Paris had held him fascinated for a long while, not only because he saw her doom written like that of Babylon in letters of fire, and Ruin, like a giant bird of prey hovering over her with beak and claw prepared to pick the very flesh from her bones,—­but also because he had met Angela Sovrani, one of the most rarely-gifted types of womanhood he had ever seen.  He recognised her genius at once, and marvelled at it.  And still more did he marvel at her engagement of marriage with