re I read it! Can I give a more
forcible instance of the way in which a State Church cuts honesty and
honour out of men's hearts."

A great many people noticed that when Mr. Northcote ended this with a
thundering voice, some one who had been listening near the door in an
Inverness cape, and hat over his brows, gave himself a sudden impetuous
shake which shook the crowd, and turning round made his way out, not
caring whom he stumbled against. The whole assembly was in a hubbub when
the orator ceased, and whispers ran freely round among all the groups in
the front. "That's young May he means." "In course it's young May.
Infernal job, as I've always said." "Oh hush, Pigeon, don't swear! but
it do seem a black burning shame, don't it?" "Bravo, Mr. Nor'cote!"
called out old Tozer, on the platform, "that's what I call giving forth
no uncertain sound. That's laying it into them 'ot and 'ot."

This was the climax of the Meeting. Everything else was flat after such
a decided appeal to personal knowledge. Phoebe alone gave a frigid
reception to the hero of the evening.

"I dislike personalities," she said, pointedly. "They never do a cause
any good; and it isn't gentlemanly; don't you think so, Mr. Sloely;" and
she turned away from Northcote, who had come to speak to her, and
devoted herself to the man at her elbow, whom she had snubbed a little
while before. Mr. Northcote said to himself that this was untrue, and
brought up a hundred very good reasons why he should have employed such
an example, but the reproof stung him to the quick, for to be
ungentlemanly was the reproach of all others most calculated to go to
his heart.

But nobody knew how Mr. May went home in his Inverness cape, breathing
fire and flame, nor of the execution he did thereupon.

CHAPTER XVIII.

MR. MAY'S AFFAIRS.

Mr. May went into his study and closed the door. He poked the fire--he
put himself into his easy-chair--he drew his writing-book towards him,
and opened it at where a half-written sheet lay waiting. And then he
paused, rubbed his hands softly together, and falling back again,
laughed quietly to himself.

Yes; he who had stormed out of the drawing-room like a whirlwind, having
discomfited everybody, leaving the girls in tears, and the boys in a
white heat of passion, when he reached the profoundest depths of his own
retirement, laughed. What did it mean? Of all the people in the world,
his children would have been most entirely thu