Soon after the arrival of Cyril Culverhouse at Bridford, the respectable inhabitants were startled by a series of letters in their leading newspaper, letters characterized by that noble eloquence which comes straight from a heart moved to indignation by the wrongs and sufferings of others. No man could feel his own griefs so keenly as this anonymous writer felt the miseries of his fellow townsmen. With an unflinching hand he tore aside the curtain from those dens of infamy and ignorance which the citizens of Bridford were willing to ignore, or to speak of with a deprecating shrug, and an admission that Bridford was a very bad place. It had never occurred to anybody that it was his business to make the place better. No modern Peter the Hermit had arisen to call for a crusade against ignorance and vice. The Bridfordians were too hotly bent upon money-making to have time to spare for crusades of any kind. Those letters in the _Bridford Journal_ did some good, and roused some citizens who had been as deeply slumberous as to the condition of their fellow-men as if they had been the pampered lackeys of the Sleeping Beauty, wasting a century in one after-dinner snooze, with a vaguely pleasant sense of repletion, afternoon sun, the lullaby of summer woods, and the drowsy hum of insects. But it was not with his pen alone that Cyril worked. Wherever the state of things was worst he was oftenest to be found. That tall erect figure of his grew to be as familiar in the alleys and back slums of Bridford as the hawker with his stale and damaged wares, or the drunken factory hand reeling home after dark. Wherever he went he did good. He, whose voice had been grave and gentle at Little Yafford, here spoke in tones of thunder. He was fearless in reprobation of brutish cruelty and besotted self-indulgence. He was tender and compassionate as a woman to the weak and oppressed, the women and children. First he made himself feared, and then he made himself loved. Even the men--the burly hardened sinners--to whom he spoke home-truths unflinchingly,--even these ended by liking him. ‘I loike ’im ’cos he ain’t afeared on us,’ said one of these strayed lambs; ‘he’ll coom into my place and call me, like a pickpocket, and yet he knaws for half a farthin’ I’d oop wi’ one o’ my clogs and brain ’im. He ain’t afeared, bless you. He puts me in moind o’ th’ lion tamer wot cum along o’ th’ show.’