at him, pinched his tender parts; and making him swear he was really the man, and had eaten nothing whatever but unadulterated water-cresses in the interval, seized on him in an ecstasy by the collar of his coat, pushed him into the surgery, knocked him over, killed him, cut him up, and enjoyed the felicity of exposing to view the very healthiest patient ever seen under dissecting hand, by favour of the fortunate discovery of the specific for him.  All to further science!—­to which, in spite of the petitions of all the scientific bodies of the civilized world, he fell a martyr on the scaffold, poor gentleman!  But we know politics to be no such empirical science.

Simeon ingeniously interwove his analogy.  He brought it home to Beaves Urmsing, whose laugh drove any tone of apology out of it.  Yet the orator was asked:  ‘Do you take politics for a joke, Simmy?’

He countered his questioner:  ’Just to liberate you from your moribund state, my friend.’  And he told the story of the wrecked sailor, found lying on the sands, flung up from the foundered ship of a Salvation captain, and how, that nothing could waken him, and there he lay fit for interment; until presently a something of a voice grew down into his ears; and it was his old chum Polly, whom he had tied to a board to give her a last chance in the surges; and Polly shaking the wet from her feathers, and shouting:  ’Polly tho dram dry!’—­which struck on the nob of Jack’s memory, to revive all the liquorly tricks of the cabin under Salvationism, and he began heaving, and at last he shook in a lazy way, and then from sputter to sputter got his laugh loose; and he sat up, and cried; ‘That did it!  Now to business!’ for he was hungry.  ’And when I catch the ring of this world’s laugh from you, my friend . . . !’ Simeon’s application of the story was drowned.

After the outburst, they heard his friend again interruptingly:  ’You keep that tongue of yours from wagging, as it did when you got round the old widow woman for her money, Simmy !’

Victor leaned forward.  Simeon towered.  He bellowed

‘And you keep that tongue of yours from committing incest on a lie!’

It was like a lightning-flash in the theatre.  The man went under.  Simeon flowed.  Conscience reproached him with the little he had done for Victor, and he had now his congenial opportunity.

Up in the box, the powers of the orator were not so cordially esteemed.  To Matilda Pridden, his tales were barely decently the flesh and the devil smothering a holy occasion to penetrate and exhort.  Dartrey sat rigid, as with the checked impatience for a leap.  Nesta looked at Louise when some one was perceived on the stage bending to her father:  It was Mr. Peridon; he never once raised his face.  Apparently he was not intelligible or audible but the next moment Victor sprang erect.  Dartrey quitted the box.  Nesta beheld her father uttering hurried words to right and left.  He passed from sight, Mr. Peridon with him; and Dartrey did not return.