A man of letters, he had struggled from obscure poverty to success and ample means; at three-and-thirty he was still hard pressed to make both ends meet, but the ten subsequent years had built for him this pleasant home and banished his long familiar anxieties to the land of nightmare. ‘It came just in time,’ he was in the habit of saying to those who had his confidence. ‘I was at the point where a man begins to turn sour, and I should have soured in earnest.’ The process had been most effectually arrested. People were occasionally found to say that his books had a tang of acerbity; possibly this was the safety-valve at work, a hint of what might have come had the old hunger-demons kept up their goading. In the man himself you discovered an extreme simplicity of feeling, a frank tenderness, a noble indignation. For one who knew him it was not difficult to understand that he should have taken up extreme social views, still less that he should act upon his convictions. All his writing foretold such a possibility, though on the other hand it exhibited devotion to forms of culture which do not as a rule predispose to democratic agitation. The explanation was perhaps too simple to be readily hit upon; the man was himself so supremely happy that with his disposition the thought of tyrannous injustice grew intolerable to him. Some incidents happened to set his wrath blazing, and henceforth, in spite of not a little popular ridicule and much shaking of the head among his friends, Mr. Westlake had his mission. ‘I have come to ask your advice and help,’ began Mutimer with directness. He was conscious of the necessity of subduing his voice, and had a certain pleasure in the ease with which he achieved this feat. It would not have been so easy a day or two ago. ‘Ah, about this awkward affair of yours,’ observed Mr. Westlake with reference to Richard’s loss of his employment, of which, as editor of the Union’s weekly paper, he had of course at once been apprised. ‘No, not about that. Since then a very unexpected thing has happened to me.’ The story was once more related, vastly to Mr. Westlake’s satisfaction. Cheerful news concerning his friends always put him in the best of spirits. He shook his head, laughing. ‘Come, come, Mutimer, this’ll never do! I’m not sure that we shall not have to consider your expulsion from the Union.’ Richard went on to mention the matters of legal routine in which he hoped Mr. Westlake would serve him. These having been settled-- ‘I wish to speak of something more important,’ he said. ‘You take it for granted, I hope, that I’m not going to make the ordinary use of this fortune. As yet I’ve only been able to hit on a few general ideas; I’m clear as to the objects I shall keep before me, but how best to serve them wants more reflection. I thought if I talked it over with you in the first place--’ The door opened, and a lady half entered the room.