standard of holiness seldom to be found even amongst those who
professed to practise the higher life, aroused the deep admiration
of the impulsive and warm-hearted Dalaber. He sought his rooms, he
loved to hear his discourses, he called himself his pupil and his
son, and was the most regular and enthusiastic attender of his
lectures and disputations.

And now he had taken a new and forward step. Suddenly he seemed to
have been launched upon a tide with which hitherto he had only
dallied and played. He was pushing out his bark into deeper waters,
and already felt as though the cables binding him to the shores of
safety and ease were completely parted.

It was in part due to the magnetic personality of Garret that this
thing had come to pass. When Dalaber left Oxford it was with no
idea that it would be a crisis in his life. He wished, out of
curiosity, to be present at the strange ceremony to be enacted in
St. Paul's Churchyard; and the knowledge that Clarke was going to
London for a week on some private business gave the finishing touch
to his resolution.

But it was not until he sat with Thomas Garret in his dark
lodgings, hearing the rush of the river beneath him, looking into
the fiery eyes of the priest, and hearing the fiery words which
fell from his lips, that Dalaber thoroughly understood to what he
had pledged himself when first he had uttered the fateful words, "I
will be a member of the Association of Christian Brothers."

True, Clarke had, on their way to town, spoken to him of a little
community, pledged to seek to distribute the life-giving Word of