Now I did feel a strong desire to lay hands on this very Riley and pull out his snub nose for him; but I forbore to say so, and simply shook my head despondently.

“I know, that, if you would come to our Dispensaries and join in our exercises, you would be sensible of a softening,” he observed.

“Yes, in the brain,” thought I; but I still remained silent.

“You should meditate upon the value of manifestations, unknown tongues, the laying on of hands, visions, ecstasies, and such like matters,” he continued.

“So I have,” said I.

“And with no result?”

“Nothing that particularly astonishes me.  I think that I hate humbug more than I did.”

“That’s a good sign,” he replied, after a brief, sharp glance of inquiry at me.  “This vain world is a humbug, as you phrase it.  Dead Orthodoxy is a humbug.  Human reason is a humbug.  We are all humbugs, unless we are made true by Dispensation.  This age will be a humbug, unless it can be wrought into an age of miracles.  If you could be brought to hate earnestly all these things, it would be a hopeful sign.”

I was on the point of disputing the hypothesis, but prudently checked myself.  Suddenly he removed my hat and put his broad, hard palm upon my organs with an impudent dexterity which made me doubt whether he had not been a pickpocket or a phrenological lecturer.

“I lay my hand upon your head and desire you to note the effect,” said he.  “Can no life come into these dry bones?  Shall they not live?  Yea, they shall live!  Do you feel no irrepressible emotion, Sir,—­no shaking?”

“Not a shake,” replied I,—­“unless it be from the bad grading.”

“Evil is mighty, but the good must eventually prevail,” he observed, impertinently cocking his snub nose toward heaven.

“I believe you are quite right in both propositions,” I admitted.  “Cardinal points of mine.  But excuse me, Sir, if you could spare my hat, I should like to put it on my head.”

I had lost patience with the man, partly because it irks me to have strangers take liberties with my person, and also because I had reached the conclusion that he was simply a shallow dissembler and rascal.  In a minute more I had cause to reconsider my charge of hypocrisy, and to question whether he might not lay claim to the nobler distinction of lunacy.  The conductor came down the car, picking out Troubletonians with his undeceivable eye, and leaned toward us with outstretched fingers.  Mr. Riley rose to his whole gaunt height at a jerk, and laid his hand on the official’s arm with a fierce, bony gripe, which seemed to startle him as if it were the clutch of a skeleton.

“There is my ticket,” said he.  “Where is yours?  Have you one for the Holy City?  None?  Then you are lost, lost, lost!”

The last words rose to a high, clear shriek, which pierced the heavy rumble of the train and rang throughout the car.  The conductor, in spite of the coolness which becomes second nature to men of his profession, turned slightly pale and shrank back before this wild apostrophe, with a thrill of spiritual horror at the solemn meaning of the words, (I thought,) and not because he considered the man a maniac.  The fanaticism of Troubleton had already flown far and cast a vague shadow of dread over a large community.