had
been followed by a few glasses of 'mixture'; containing a less liberal
proportion of water than the articles he himself labelled with that
broadly generic name, he was in that condition which his groom indicated
with poetic ambiguity by saying that 'master had been in the sunshine'.
Under these circumstances, after a hard day, in which he had really had
no regular meal, it seemed a natural relaxation to step into the bar of
the Red Lion, where, as it was Saturday evening, he should be sure to
find Dempster, and hear the latest news about the protest against the
evening lecture.

'Have you hooked Ben Landor yet?' he continued, as he took two chairs,
one for his body, and the other for his right leg.

'No,' said Mr. Budd, the churchwarden, shaking his head; 'Ben Landor has
a way of keeping himself neutral in everything, and he doesn't like to
oppose his father. Old Landor is a regular Tryanite. But we haven't got
your name yet, Pilgrim.'

'Tut tut, Budd,' said Mr. Dempster, sarcastically, 'you don't expect
Pilgrim to sign? He's got a dozen Tryanite livers under his treatment.
Nothing like cant and methodism for producing a superfluity of bile.'

'O, I thought, as Pratt had declared himself a Tryanite, we should be
sure to get Pilgrim on our side.'

Mr. Pilgrim was not a man to sit quiet under a sarcasm, nature having
endowed him with a considerable share of self-defensive wit. In his most
sober moments he had an impediment in his speech, and as copious
gin-and-water stimulated not the speech but the impediment, he had time
to make his retort sufficiently bitter.

'Why, to tell you the truth, Budd,' he spluttered, 'there's a report all
over the town that Deb Traunter swears you shall take her with you as one
of the delegates, and they say there's to be a fine crowd at your door
the morning you start, to see the row. Knowing your tenderness for that
member of the fair sex, I thought you might find it impossible to deny
her. I hang back a little from signing on that account, as Prendergast
might not take the protest well if Deb Traunter went with you.'

Mr. Budd was a small, sleek-headed bachelor of five-and-forty, whose
scandalous life had long furnished his more moral neighbours with an
after-dinner joke. He had no other striking characteristic, except that
he was a currier of choleric temperament, so that you might wonder why he
had been chosen as clergyman's churchwarden, if I did not tell you that
he had rec