“Iss, silence for ever and ever, amen,” said Towy.  “No trial I need.  How can the Judge judge if there’s no judging to be?  Go up will I then.  Hope to see you again, Shames.”

The Overseer tightened his girdle.  “Thus saith the Lord,” he proclaimed:  “’I will consider each by his deeds or all by the deeds of their two apostles.’”

“Ho-ho,” said Towy.  “Half one moment.  Think will we.  Dissenters, crowd here.  Ben Lloyd, make arguments.  Tricky is old Shames.”

The Dissenters assembled close to Ben and Towy, and the Church people crept near them in order to share their counsel; but the Dissenters turned upon their enemies and bruised them with fists and Bibles and hymn-books, and called them frogs, turks, thieves, atheists, blacks; and there never has been heard such a tumult in any house.  Alarmed that he could not part one side from the other, the Overseer sought Satan, who had a name for crafty dealings with disputants.

Satan was distressed.  “If it was not for personal reasons,” he said, “I would let them go to Hell.”  He sent into the Chamber a carpenter who put a barrier from wall to wall, and he appointed Jude in charge of the barrier to guard that no one went under it or over it.

Then the wise men of the Dissenters continued to examine the Lord’s offer; and a thousand men declared they were holy enough to go before God, and from the thousand five hundred were cast out, and from the five hundred three hundred, and from the two hundred one hundred were cast away.  Now this hundred were Baptists, Methodists, and Congregationalists, and they quarreled so harshly and decried one another so spitefully that Ben and Towy made with them a compact to speak specially for each of them in the private ear of God.  The strife quelled and Towy having cried loudly:  “Dissenters and Churchers, glad you are that me and Ben Lloyd, Hem Pee, are your apostles,” he and Ben followed the Overseer.

In the Judgment Hall the two apostles crouched to pray, and they were stirred by Satan laying his hands on their shoulders.

“Prayers are useless here, my friends,” said the Devil.  “We must proceed with the business.  I am just as anxious as you are that everything reaches a satisfactory conclusion.”

“I object,” said Ben.  “Solemnly object.  I don’t know this infidel.  I don’t want to know him.”

“Go from here,” Towy gruntled.  “A sweat is in my whiskers.  Inhabitants, why isn’t his tongue a red-hot poker?...  Well, boys Palace, grand this is.  Say who you are?” he asked one whose face shone like a mirror.  “Respected Towy-Watkins am I.”

He whose face shone like a polished mirror answered that he was Moses the Keeper of the Balance.  “The Lord is in the Cloud,” he said.

Towy addressed the Cloud, which was the breadth of a man’s hand, and which was brighter than the golden halo of the throne:  “Big Man, peep at your helper.  Was not I a ruler over the capel?  Religious were my prayers.”