cheers changed from enthusiasm to irony as the
irregular procession moved towards the doors, and an irreverent
Secularist at the back of the hall jumped on his seat and shouted, with
an unmistakable Old Street accent:

"Got a bit more than you came for, eh? Hope you've enjoyed your lordly
selves. Don't forget to say your prayers to-night. You want a lot of
converting before _you'll_ be Christians. I've 'alf a mind to put up one
for you to-night myself, blowed if I 'aven't."

Then the applause changed to laughter, hearty and good-humoured, and
when the President had proposed the usual vote of thanks to the
lecturer, and Vane had accepted his invitation to give a series of
addresses at the halls of the Society throughout the country, the most
memorable meeting on record at the Hall of Science came to an end.

CHAPTER XXIV.

The next Sunday, Vane, the Mayfair Missionary, as one of the evening
papers had called him, preached at St. Chrysostom, and took for his
text:

"Art thou a master of Israel and knowest not these things."

During the week, the storm of indignation against him had been growing
both in strength and violence, and a movement was already on foot to
arraign him before the Ecclesiastical Courts on charges of heresy and
unbelief, and of bringing the priesthood into contempt by publicly
associating himself as a priest with the avowed enemies of the Church.

The church was, of course, crowded, but the congregation was composed of
very different elements from those which had made up his congregation a
fortnight before. There were many of its richest members there, but they
did not come in their carriages. Many others had come in trains or
'busses, or had walked from Mile End and Bethnal Green to hear the words
of the new prophet; and scores of these had not seen the inside of a
church for years, or ever dreamt of listening with anything like respect
to a sermon from a Christian pulpit, yet none were more respectful and
attentive than these infidels and heretics whose respectful attention
and new-awakened reverence were the first fruits of Vane's mission
harvest.

His sermon was a direct and uncompromising reply to the challenge to
prove that he was worthy to wear the cloth of the priesthood, and when
it was over, his hearers, the believers and unbelievers alike, had been
driven to the conviction, unpleasant as it was to some of them, that if
the preacher had drawn his conclusions right from t