“Still the same old pagan,” laughed Paul.

“No, not the same, sonny,” said Barney Bill, holding up his knife, which supported a morsel of cheese.  “Old.  Rheumaticky.  Got to live in a ’ouse when it rains—­me who never keered whether I was baked to a cinder or wet through!  I ain’t a pagan no more.  I’m a crock.”

Jane smiled affectionately at the old man, and her face was lit with rare sweetness when she smiled.  “He really is just the same,” she said.

“He hasn’t changed much in forty years,” said Mr. Finn.

“I was a good Conservative then, as I am now,” said Bill.  “That’s one thing, anyhow.  So was you, Silas.  But you had Radical leanings.”

Barney Bill’s remark set the talk on political lines.  Paul learned that his host had sat for a year or more as a Progressive on the Hickney Heath Borough Council and aspired to a seat in Parliament.

“The Kingdom of Heaven,” said he, not unctuously or hypocritically, but in his grave tone of conviction, “is not adequately represented in the House.”

Paul pointed out that in the House of Lords one had the whole bench of Bishops.

“I’m not a member of the Established Church, Mr. Savelli,” replied Mr. Finn.  “I’m a Dissenter—­a Free Zion’st.”

“I’ve heard him conduc’ the service,” said Barney Bill.  “He built the Meeting House close by, yer know.  I goes sometimes to try and get converted.  But I’m too old and stiff in the j’ints.  No longer a pagan, but a crock, sonny.  But I likes to listen to him.  Gorbli—­ bless me, it’s a real bean feast—­that’s what it is.  He talks straight from the shoulder, he does, just as you talked to-night.  Lets ’em ’ave it bing-bang in the eye.  Don’t he, Jane?”

“Bill means,” she explained, with the shadow of a smile, for Paul’s benefit, “that Mr. Finn is an eloquent preacher.”

“D’yer suppose he didn’t understand what I meant Y’ he exclaimed, setting down the beer glass which he was about to raise to his lips.  “Him, what I discovered reading Sir Walter Scott with the cover off when he was a nipper with no clothes on?  You understood, sonny.

“Of course I did.”  He laughed gaily and turned to his host, who had suffered Barney Bill’s queer eulogy with melancholy indulgence.  “One of these days I should like to come and hear you preach.”

“Any Sunday, at ten and six.  You would be more than welcome.”

The meal was over.  Barney Bill pulled a blackened clay pipe from his waistcoat pocket and a paper of tobacco.

“I’m a non-smoker,” said Mr. Finn to Paul, “and I’m sorry I’ve nothing to offer you—­I see little company, so I don’t keep cigars in the house—­but if you would care to smoke—–­” he waved a courteous and inviting hand.

Paul whipped out his cigarette case.  It was of gold—­a present last Christmas from the Winwood fitting part of the equipment of a Fortunate Youth.  He opened it, offered a cigarette to Barney Bill.