But new life was already on the way.  On the town side the sad streets round New Zion led one into a more prosperous High Street, and indeed Zion Street itself, as it turned the corner, flamed into quite a jovial and ruddy shop—­a provision merchant’s, and kept by Eli Moggridge.  The name did its owner considerable wrong, for its suggestion of puritanical sanctimoniousness was a flat contradiction of the jovial and ruddy personality, the huge red-whiskered laugher, for whom it stood, and of whom the shop, with its healthy smell of cheese and its air of exuberant prosperity, was a much more truthful expression.  Well, the business was growing with such gusto that Mr. Moggridge felt he might afford a home away from his shop, and thus he came to take the biggish empty house which presently put on new paint and once more seemed quite proud of being “Zion View.”

Till this time, Mr. Moggridge. had “attended” elsewhere, but he was not so young as he had been and somewhat stouter, and the stealthy approach of comfortable habits had suggested to him that his old chapel was rather at an unnecessary distance.  Then, too, the fact of his house being called after New Zion seemed to impose a sort of obligation towards the sad old chapel.  Besides, Mr. Moggridge was not inhumanly above the pleasures of self-importance, and though he did not express it in just those words, or indeed in any words at all, the idea of his being the Maecenas of New Zion was suddenly born within him.

Now, quick was even the word with Mr. Moggridge, as became a successful man of business, and for him to conceive an idea was to carry it out, as goods were always delivered from Mr. Moggridge’s shop, with despatch.  Also in some dim far-off way Mr. Moggridge’s mind had, all unconsciously, been stirred by vibrations of what we call the New Spirit.  The new spirit of any age works its way even into its businesses, and though Mr. Moggridge wouldn’t have so described it, it was the “New Spirit” that had made the success of his provision shop.  Speaking of the need of New Zion, Mr. Moggridge called it “new blood.”  He meant the “New Spirit;” and it was in reply to his advertisement for a new pastor, that the “New Spirit” in the person of Theophilus Londonderry came one Sunday to preach at New Zion.

CHAPTER IV

ENDS QUITE ROMANTICALLY

Eli Moggridge was a judge of men, and he liked Theophilus Londonderry at a glance.  Theophilus Londonderry was also a judge of men, and he liked Eli Moggridge.  In fact, two men that needed each other had met.