indebted
to you for a clearer view of the motives that should actuate us in our
pursuit of good works. Not that I can accuse myself of having ever had a
self-righteous spirit, but my humility was rather instinctive than based
on a firm ground of doctrinal knowledge, such as you so admirably impart
to us.'

Mrs. Linnet's usual entreaty that Mr. Tryan would 'have something--some
wine and water and a biscuit', was just here a welcome relief from the
necessity of answering Miss Pratt's oration.

'Not anything, my dear Mrs. Linnet, thank you. You forget what a
Rechabite I am. By the by, when I went this morning to see a poor girl in
Butcher's Lane, whom I had heard of as being in a consumption, I found
Mrs. Dempster there. I had often met her in the street, but did not know
it was Mrs. Dempster. It seems she goes among the poor a good deal. She
is really an interesting-looking woman. I was quite surprised, for I have
heard the worst account of her habits--that she is almost as bad as her
husband. She went out hastily as soon as I entered. But' (apologetically)
'I am keeping you all standing, and I must really hurry away. Mrs.
Pettifer, I have not had the pleasure of calling on you for some time; I
shall take an early opportunity of going your way. Good evening, good
evening.'

Chapter 4

Mr. Tryan was right in saying that the 'row' in Milby had been
preconcerted by Dempster. The placards and the caricature were prepared
before the departure of the delegates; and it had been settled that Mat
Paine, Dempster's clerk, should ride out on Thursday morning to meet them
at Whitlow, the last place where they would change horses, that he might
gallop back and prepare an ovation for the triumvirate in case of their
success. Dempster had determined to dine at Whitlow: so that Mat Paine
was in Milby again two hours before the entrance of the delegates, and
had time to send a whisper up the back streets that there was promise of
a 'spree' in the Bridge Way, as well as to assemble two knots of picked
men--one to feed the flame of orthodox zeal with gin-and-water, at the
Green Man, near High Street; the other to solidify their church
principles with heady beer at the Bear and Ragged Staff in the Bridge
Way.

The Bridge Way was an irregular straggling street, where the town fringed
off raggedly into the Whitlow road: rows of new red-brick houses, in
which ribbon-looms were rattling behind long lines of window, alternating
wit