In another minute there would have been (as there have been ere now) four or five young girls raving and tossing upon the floor, in mad terror and excitement; or, possibly, half the congregation might have rushed out (as a congregation has rushed out ere now) headed by the preacher himself, and ran headlong down to the quay-pool, with shrieks and shouts, declaring that they had cast the devil out of Betsey Pennington, and were hunting him into the sea:  but Campbell saw that the madness must be stopped at once; and rising, he thundered, in a voice which brought all to their senses in a moment—­

“Stop!  I, too, have a sermon to preach to you; I trust I am a Christian man, and that not of last year’s making, or the year before.  Follow me outside, if you be rational beings, and let me tell you the truth—­God’s truth!  Men!” he said, with an emphasis on the word, “you at least, will give me a fair hearing, and you too, modest married women!  Leave that fellow with the shameless hussies who like to go into fits at his feet.”

The appeal was not in vain.  The soberer majority followed him out; the insane minority soon followed, in the mere hope of fresh excitement; while the preacher was fain to come also, to guard his flock from the wolf.  Campbell sprang upon a large block of stone, and taking off his cap, opened his mouth, and spake unto them.

* * * * *

Readers will doubtless desire to hear what Major Campbell said:  but they will be disappointed; and perhaps it is better for them that they should be.  Let each of them, if they think it worth while, write for themselves a discourse fitting for a Christian man, who loved and honoured his Bible too much to find in a few scattered texts, all misinterpreted, and some mistranslated, excuses for denying fact, reason, common justice, the voice of God in his own moral sense, and the whole remainder of the Bible from beginning to end.

Whatsoever words he spoke they came home to those wild hearts with power.  And when he paused, and looked intently into the faces of his auditory, to see what effect he was producing, a murmur of assent and admiration rose from the crowd, which had now swelled to half the population of the town.  And no wonder; no wonder that, as the men were enchained by the matter, so were the women by the manner.  The grand head, like a grey granite peak against the clear blue sky; the tall figure, with all its martial stateliness and ease; the gesture of his long arm, so graceful, and yet so self-restrained; the tones of his voice which poured from beneath that proud moustache, now tender as a girl’s, now ringing like a trumpet over roof and sea.  There were old men there, old beyond the years of man, who said they had never seen nor heard the like:  but it must be like what their fathers had told them of, when John Wesley, on the cliffs of St. Ives, out-thundered the thunder of the gale.  To Grace he seemed one of the old Scotch Covenanters of whom she had read, risen from the dead to preach there from his rock beneath the great temple of God’s air, a wider and a juster creed than theirs.  Frank drew Thurnall’s arm through his, and whispered, “I shall thank you for this to my dying day:”  but Thurnall held down his head.  He seemed deeply moved.  At last, half to himself,—­