’Capital!  Do you propose, then, that we shall call a special meeting of the Committee?  Or would you prefer to suggest a committee of your own?’

’No, I think our own committee will do very well, at all events for the present.  The first thing, of course, is to get the financial details of our scheme put into shape.  I go to Belwick again this afternoon; my solicitor must get his business through as soon as possible.’

‘You will reside for the most part at Wanley?’

’At the Manor, yes.  It is occupied just now, but I suppose will soon be free.’

‘Do you know that part of the country, Stella?’ Mr. Westlake asked of his wife.

She roused herself, drawing in her breath, and uttered a short negative.

‘As soon as I get into the house,’ Richard resumed to Mr. Westlake, ’I hope you’ll come and examine the place.  It’s unfortunate that the railway misses it by about three miles, but Rodman tells me we can easily run a private line to Agworth station.  However, the first thing is to get our committee at work on the scheme.’  Richard repeated this phrase with gusto.  ’Perhaps you could bring it up at the Saturday meeting?’

‘You’ll be in town on Saturday?’

‘Yes; I have a lecture in Islington on Sunday.’

‘Saturday will do, then.  Is this confidential?’

’Not at all.  We may as well get as much encouragement out of it as we can.  Don’t you think so?’

‘Certainly.’

Richard did not give expression to his thought that a paragraph on the subject in the Union’s weekly organ, the ‘Fiery Cross,’ might be the best way of promoting such encouragement; but he delayed his departure for a few minutes with talk round about the question of the prudence which must necessarily be observed in publishing a project so undigested.  Mr. Westlake, who was responsible for the paper, was not likely to transgress the limits of good taste, and when Richard, on Saturday morning, searched eagerly the columns of the ‘Cross,’ he was not altogether satisfied with the extreme discretion which marked a brief paragraph among those headed:  ’From Day to Day.’  However, many of the readers were probably by that time able to supply the missing proper-name.

It was not the fault of Daniel Dabbs if members of the Hoxton and Islington branch of the Union read the paragraph without understanding to whom it referred.  Daniel was among the first to hear of what had befallen the Mutimer family, and from the circle of his fellow-workmen the news spread quickly.  Talk was rife on the subject of Mutimer’s dismissal from Longwood Brothers’, and the sensational rumour which followed so quickly found an atmosphere well prepared for its transmission.  Hence the unusual concourse at the meeting-place in Islington next Sunday evening, where, as it became known to others besides Socialists, Mutimer was engaged to lecture.  Richard experienced some vexation that his lecture was not to be at Commonwealth Hall, where the gathering would doubtless have been much larger.