“Well, as it happens,” said Mr. Bullock sarcastically, “Mr. Smillie and I here do most of our work with the help of the Holy Ghost, so you’ve hit on a bad example to work off your sneers on.”

“I’m not trying to sneer,” Mark protested.  “But strangely enough just before you came along I was thinking to myself how much I should like to travel over England preaching about Our Lord, because I think that England has need of Him.  But I also think, now you’ve answered my question, that you are doing more harm than good by your interpretation of the Holy Ghost.”

“Mr. Smillie,” interrupted Mr. Bullock in an elaborately off-hand voice, “if you’ve counted the change and it’s all correct, we’d better get a move on.  Let’s gird up our loins, Mr. Smillie, and not sit wrestling here with infidels.”

“No, really, you must allow me,” Mark persisted.  “You’ve had it so much your own way with your tracts and your talks this last few weeks that by now you must be in need of a sermon yourselves.  The gospel you preach is only going to add to the complacency of England, and England is too complacent already.  All Northern nations are, which is why they are Protestant.  They demand a religion which will truckle to them, a religion which will allow them to devote six days of the week to what is called business and on the seventh day to rest and praise God that they are not as other men.”

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s,” said Mr. Smillie, putting the change in his pocket and untying the nosebag from the horse.

“Ye cannot serve God and mammon,” Mark retorted.  “And I wish you’d let me finish my argument.”

“Mr. Smillie and I aren’t touring the Midlands trying to find grapes on thorns and figs on thistles,” said Mr. Bullock scathingly.  “We’d have given you a chance, if you’d have shown any fruits of the Spirit.”

“You’ve just said you weren’t looking for grapes or figs,” Mark laughed.  “I’m sorry I’ve made you so cross.  But you began the argument by asking me if I was saved.  Think how annoyed you would have been if I had begun a conversation by asking you if you were washed.”

“My last words to you is,” said Mr. Bullock solemnly, looking out of the caravan window, “my last words to you are,” he corrected himself, “is to avoid beer.  You can touch up the horse, Mr. Smillie.”

“I’ll come and touch you up, you big-mouthed Bible thumpers,” a rich voice shouted from the inn door.  “Yes, you sit outside my public-house and swill minerals when you’re so full of gas already you could light a corporation gasworks.  Avoid beer, you walking bellows?  Step down out of that travelling menagerie, and I’ll give you ‘avoid beer.’  You’ll avoid more than beer before I’ve finished with you.”

But the gospel bearers without paying any attention to the tirade went on their way; and Mark who did not wait to listen to the innkeeper’s abuse of all religion and all religious people went on his way in the opposite direction.