rd and flung him through the archway into the market-place with just
half a magnificent beard and moustache. It was he who introduced
hair-dyeing into Bursley. Hair-dyeing might have grown popular in the
town if one night, owing to some confusion with red ink, the Chairman of
the Bursley Burial Board had not emerged from Jock-at-a-Venture's with a
vermilion top-knot and been greeted on the pavement by his waiting wife
with the bitter words: "Thou foo!"

A little later Jock-at-a-Venture abandoned barbering and took up music,
for which he had always shown a mighty gift. He was really musical and
performed on both the piano and the cornet, not merely with his hands
and mouth, but with the whole of his agile expressive body. He made a
good living out of public-houses and tea-meetings, for none could play
the piano like Jock, were it hymns or were it jigs. His cornet was
employed in a band at Moorthorne, the mining village to the east of
Bursley, and on his nocturnal journeys to and from Moorthorne with the
beloved instrument he had had many a set-to with the marauding colliers
who made the road dangerous for cowards. One result of this connection
with Moorthorne was that a boxing club had been formed in Bursley, with
Jock as chief, for the upholding of Bursley's honour against visiting
Moorthorne colliers in Bursley's market-place.

Then came Jock's conversion to religion, a blazing affair, and his
abandonment of public-houses. As tea-meetings alone would not keep him,
he had started again in life, for the fifth or sixth time--as a
herbalist now. It was a vocation which suited his delicate hands and his
enthusiasm for humanity. At last, and quite lately, he had risen to be a
local preacher. His first two sermons had impassioned the congregations,
though there were critics to accuse him of theatricality. Accidents
happened to him sometimes. On this very afternoon of the Friday before
Martinmas an accident had happened to him. He had been playing the piano
at the rehearsal of the Grand Annual Evening Concert of the Bursley Male
Glee-Singers. The Bursley Male Glee-Singers, determined to beat records,
had got a soprano with a foreign name down from Manchester. On seeing
the shabby perky little man who was to accompany her songs the soprano
had had a moment of terrible misgiving. But as soon as Jock, with a
careful-careless glance at the music, which he had never seen before,
had played the first chords (with a "How's that for t