’It’s not a question of likelihood; it’s a known fact.  I could fetch you my Encyclopaedia, and show it you this moment.’

‘I don’t care a straw, sir, either for you or your Encyclopaedia,’ said Mr. Dempster; ’a farrago of false information, of which you picked up an imperfect copy in a cargo of waste paper.  Will you tell me, sir, that I don’t know the origin of Presbyterianism?  I, sir, a man known through the county, intrusted with the affairs of half a score parishes; while you, sir, are ignored by the very fleas that infest the miserable alley in which you were bred.’

A loud and general laugh, with ‘You’d better let him alone Byles’; ‘You’ll not get the better of Dempster in a hurry’, drowned the retort of the too well-informed Mr. Byles, who, white with rage, rose and walked out of the bar.

‘A meddlesome, upstart, Jacobinical fellow, gentlemen’, continued Mr. Dempster.  ’I was determined to be rid of him.  What does he mean by thrusting himself into our company?  A man with about as much principle as he has property, which, to my knowledge, is considerably less than none.  An insolvent atheist, gentlemen.  A deistical prater, fit to sit in the chimney-corner of a pot-house, and make blasphemous comments on the one greasy newspaper fingered by beer-swilling tinkers.  I will not suffer in my company a man who speaks lightly of religion.  The signature of a fellow like Byles would be a blot on our protest.’

‘And how do you get on with your signatures?’ said Mr. Pilgrim, the doctor, who had presented his large top-booted person within the bar while Mr. Dempster was speaking.  Mr. Pilgrim had just returned from one of his long day’s rounds among the farm-houses, in the course of which he had sat down to two hearty meals that might have been mistaken for dinners if he had not declared them to be ‘snaps’; and as each snap had been followed by a few glasses of ‘mixture’; containing a less liberal proportion of water than the articles he himself labelled with that broadly generic name, he was in that condition which his groom indicated with poetic ambiguity by saying that ‘master had been in the sunshine’.  Under these circumstances, after a hard day, in which he had really had no regular meal, it seemed a natural relaxation to step into the bar of the Red Lion, where, as it was Saturday evening, he should be sure to find Dempster, and hear the latest news about the protest against the evening lecture.

‘Have you hooked Ben Landor yet?’ he continued, as he took two chairs, one for his body, and the other for his right leg.

‘No,’ said Mr. Budd, the churchwarden, shaking his head; ’Ben Landor has a way of keeping himself neutral in everything, and he doesn’t like to oppose his father.  Old Landor is a regular Tryanite.  But we haven’t got your name yet, Pilgrim.’

‘Tut tut, Budd,’ said Mr. Dempster, sarcastically, ’you don’t expect Pilgrim to sign?  He’s got a dozen Tryanite livers under his treatment.  Nothing like cant and methodism for producing a superfluity of bile.’