Mr Snaggs’s objection was professional.  He considered that he alone was authorized to purvey drama to the town; he considered that among all purveyors of drama he alone was respectable, the rest being upstarts, poachers, and lewd fellows.  And as the dissenting ministers gazed at Mr Snaggs’s superb moleskin waistcoat, and listened to his positive brazen voice, they were almost convinced that the hated institution of the theatre could be made respectable and that Mr Snaggs had so made it.  At any rate, by comparison with these flashy and flimsy booths, the Blood Tub, rooted in the antiquity of thirty years, had a dignified, even a reputable air—­and did not Mr Snaggs give frequent performances of Cruickshanks’ The Bottle, a sermon against intemperance more impressive than any sermon delivered from a pulpit in a chapel?  The dissenting ministers listened with deference as Mr Snaggs explained to them exactly what they ought to have done, and what they had failed to do, in order to ensure the success of their campaign against play-acting in the Fair; a campaign which now for several years past had been abortive—­largely (it was rumoured) owing to the secret jealousy of the Church of England.

“If ony on ye had had any gumption,” Mr Snaggs was saying fearlessly to the parsons, “ye’d ha’ gone straight to th’ Chief Bailiff and ye’d ha’—­Houch!” He made the peculiar exclamatory noise roughly indicated by the last word, and spat in disgust; and without the slightest ceremony of adieu walked ponderously away up the slope, leaving his sentence unfinished.

“It is remarkable how Mr Snaggs flees from before my face,” said a neat, alert, pleasant voice from behind the three parsons.  “And yet save that in my unregenerate day I once knocked him off a stool in front of his own theayter, I never did him harm nor wished him anything but good....  Gentlemen!”

A rather small, slight man of about forty, with tiny feet and hands, and “very quick on his pins,” saluted the three parsons gravely.

“Mr Smith!” one parson stiffly inclined.

“Mr Smith!” from the second.

“Brother Smith!” from the third, who was Jock Smith’s own parson, being in charge of the Bethesda in Trafalgar Road where Jock Smith worshipped and where he had recently begun to preach as a local preacher.

Jock Smith, herbalist, shook hands with vivacity but also with self-consciousness.  He was self-conscious because he knew himself to be one of the chief characters and attractions of the town, because he was well aware that wherever he went people stared at him and pointed him out to each other.  And he was half proud and half ashamed of his notoriety.

Even now a little band of ragged children had wandered after him, and, undeterred by the presence of the parsons, were repeating among themselves, in a low audacious monotone: 

“Jock-at-a-Venture!  Jock-at-a-Venture!”

II