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192 Do it, Mr. Malleson. Do all you can for him. Get every one else to do everything in their power to hold up his hands in this splendid fight he's making against aristocratic tyranny."

"I will, Mrs. Bradley. You can rest assured that my hat's in the ring for him. I'll go see him this morning and ask what I can do. No, I can't see him this morning. I promised Jane Chichester to take her out in my car to Blooming Grove, and I suppose I've got to do it, or I won't hear the end of it. But I'm with him, Mrs. Bradley, heart and soul."

She smiled again, and rose and gave him her hand.

"Thank you so much!" she said as she permitted her hand to remain in his grasp. "You are a real crusader."

Barry did not know just what a crusader was, but he did know that Mrs. Bradley smiled on him, and looked at him out of eloquent eyes, and he went out from her presence with such a buoyant sensation of pride and happiness as, in all his life before, he had never experienced.

After he had gone the secretary of the Socialist League turned again to her books and papers, but she did not resume her work. Instead she sat staring out through the dim window at the dead-wall across the area. What was there about a dead-wall that could, with such foreboding significance, so hold her gaze?

A woman entered her office and interrupted her musings. She turned toward her visitor impatiently, but not discourteously.

"I have not yet had an opportunity," she said, in answer to the woman's inquiry, "to take up your matter with the directors of the League."

"Then I hope you'll soon find one," was the reply. "You should know that it is of the utmost importance, both to your organization and to ours, that we should know definitely and without delay where you stand in the matter."