The Rev. James took up the task eagerly.  Leaving the buggy in charge of a small boy, the two gentle men joined the crowd, and James soon recognised that the speaker was delivering something very like a sermon of his own, but seasoning it with a sort of quaint, insolent humour, that suited the tastes of his hearers admirably.  The crowd laughed and applauded.

“Brothers and sisters,” said the speaker, “I have shown you that these young men must be divorced from the long-sleever, and rescued from the lures of the plump, peroxided barmaid, and the blandishments of Bung, the reprobate who runs the pub.  I have shown you they must be turned from the joys of the ‘pushes,’ tobacco chewing, and stoushing in offensive Chinamen with bricks, and now I appeal to you for the means of doing things.  Money is said to be the root of all evil, but it is also the means of much good.  If we want to go to heaven, we must pay the tram fare.  He who gives quickly gives twice, but it is better still to give twice and to give quickly.”

As he spoke he moved among the people, taking up a collection in his hat, and the people responded liberally.  He returned to his little eminence, and the Rev. James Nippit forced his way through the crowd, and confronted him, flushed, furious, over flowing.

“So,” said James, “this is the reward of my kindness?  This—­”

Nickie was silent for a moment—­for the preacher was Nicholas Crips, garbed in an old suit of his master’s—­then he turned calmly and said: 

“This gentleman, brothers and sisters, is the Reverend James Nippit, the founder of our noble much desire to say a few words.  I desire to say mission.  He desires to say a few words.”

“Yes, my good people,” cried James, “I do very that the Young Men’s Mission is one of the finest and most worthy institutions in this city to and to express the abhorrence I feel for those villains who make use of the credit the Mission has won for their own infamous purposes.”  He went on to explain how the Mission was being robbed, and wound up dramatically with the words:  “And this man, this man at my side, this man who has addressed you in the guise of a minister, is one of the most wicked and detestable of the impostors.”

But in consequence of his oratorical training, and his clergyman’s inability to come quickly to a point the denunciation lost its effect, for Nickie was not at the speaker’s side; he had gone.  He had taken the Rev. James Nippit’s buggy, and driven off, and he carried the collection with him.

The buggy was safe in the carriage-house when the Rev. James returned home, but Nickie was seeking fields and pastors new.

CHAPTER V.

The incident in Biggs’s buildings.

The tall, spare man in rusty, clerical raiment was going from room to room in one of the huge, city buildings where Business people, gregarious as sparrows, nest in hundreds.