of them he has neither
father nor uncle, neither kith nor kin. Good-bye!... Ah, this way
out--this way."

The footman had stepped up to the Minister and whispered something about
a crowd in front of the house, and John was passed out of the garden by
the back door into the park.

Three hours afterward the frequenters of Epsom racecourse saw a man in a
black cassock get up into an unoccupied wagonette and make ready to
speak. He was on the breast of "The Hill," directly facing the Grand
Stand, in a close pack of carriages, four-in-hands, landaus, and hansoms,
filled with gaily dressed women in pink and yellow costumes, drinking
champagne and eating sandwiches, and being waited upon by footmen in
livery. It was the interval between two events of the race meeting, and
beyond the labyrinth of vehicles there was a line of betting men in outer
garments of blue silk and green alpaca, standing on stools under huge
umbrellas and calling the odds to motley crowds of sweltering people on
foot.

"Men and women," he began, and five thousand faces seemed to rise at the
sound of his voice. The bookmakers kept up their nasal cries of "I lay on
the field!" "Five to-one bar one!" But the crowd turned and deserted
them. "It's the Father," "Father Storm," the people said, with laughter
and chuckling, loose jests and some swearing, but they came up to him
with one accord until the space about, him, as far as to the roadway by
which carriages climbed the hill, was an unbroken pavement of rippling
faces.

"Good old Father!" and then laughter. "What abart the end of the world,
old gel?" and then references to "the petticoats" and more laughter.
"'Ere, I'll 'ave five bob each way, Resurrection," and shrieks of wilder
laughter still.

The preacher stood for some moments silent and unshaken. Then the quiet
dignity of the man and the love of fair play in the crowd secured him a
hearing. He began amid general silence:

"I don't know if it is contrary to regulations to stand here to speak,
but I am risking that for the urgency of the hour and message. Men and
women, you are here under false pretences. You pretend to yourselves and
to each other that you have come out of a love of sport, but you have not
done so, and you know it. Sport is a plausible pleasure; to love horses
and take delight in their fleetness is a pardonable vanity, but you are
here to practise an unpardonable vice. You have come to gamble, and your
gambling is attended by e