’O, I thought, as Pratt had declared himself a Tryanite, we should be sure to get Pilgrim on our side.’

Mr. Pilgrim was not a man to sit quiet under a sarcasm, nature having endowed him with a considerable share of self-defensive wit.  In his most sober moments he had an impediment in his speech, and as copious gin-and-water stimulated not the speech but the impediment, he had time to make his retort sufficiently bitter.

‘Why, to tell you the truth, Budd,’ he spluttered, ’there’s a report all over the town that Deb Traunter swears you shall take her with you as one of the delegates, and they say there’s to be a fine crowd at your door the morning you start, to see the row.  Knowing your tenderness for that member of the fair sex, I thought you might find it impossible to deny her.  I hang back a little from signing on that account, as Prendergast might not take the protest well if Deb Traunter went with you.’

Mr. Budd was a small, sleek-headed bachelor of five-and-forty, whose scandalous life had long furnished his more moral neighbours with an after-dinner joke.  He had no other striking characteristic, except that he was a currier of choleric temperament, so that you might wonder why he had been chosen as clergyman’s churchwarden, if I did not tell you that he had recently been elected through Mr. Dempster’s exertions, in order that his zeal against the threatened evening lecture might be backed by the dignity of office.

‘Come, come, Pilgrim,’ said Mr. Tomlinson, covering Mr. Budd’s retreat, ‘you know you like to wear the crier’s coat,’ green o’ one side and red o’ the other.  You’ve been to hear Tryan preach at Paddiford Common—­you know you have.’

’To be sure I have; and a capital sermon too.  It’s a pity you were not there.  It was addressed to those “void of understanding."’

‘No, no, you’ll never catch me there,’ returned Mr. Tomlinson, not in the least stung:  ’he preaches without book, they say, just like a Dissenter.  It must be a rambling sort of a concern.’

‘That’s not the worst,’ said Mr. Dempster; ’he preaches against good works; says good works are not necessary to salvation—­a sectarian, antinomian, anabaptist doctrine.  Tell a man he is not to be saved by his works, and you open the flood-gates of all immorality.  You see it in all these canting innovators; they’re all bad ones by the sly; smooth-faced, drawling, hypocritical fellows, who pretend ginger isn’t hot in their mouths, and cry down all innocent pleasures; their hearts are all the blacker for their sanctimonious outsides.  Haven’t we been warned against those who make clean the outside of the cup and the platter?  There’s this Tryan, now, he goes about praying with old women, and singing with charity children; but what has he really got his eye on all the while?  A domineering ambitious Jesuit, gentlemen; all he wants is to get his foot far enough into the parish to step into Crewe’s shoes when the old gentleman dies.  Depend upon it, whenever you see a man pretending to be better than his neighbours, that man has either some cunning end to serve, or his heart is rotten with spiritual pride.’