hem--he delivered a short and
vigorous protest, in the name of decency, good feeling, and common-sense
against the idiotic profanities with which the whole immediate
neighborhood seemed to be reeking. It was the first time he had
approached any religious matter directly. A knot of workmen sitting
together at the back of the room looked at each other with a significant
grimace or two.

When Robert ceased speaking, one of them, an elderly watchmaker, got up
and made a dry and cynical little speech, nothing moving but the thin
lips in the shrivelled mahogany face. Robert knew the man well. He was a
Genevese by birth, Calvinist by blood, revolutionist by development. He
complained that Mr. Elsmere had taken his audience by surprise; that a
good many of those present understood the remarks he had just made as an
attack upon an institution in which many of them were deeply interested;
and that he invited Mr. Elsmere to a more thorough discussion of the
matter, in a place where he could be both heard and answered.

The room applauded with some signs of suppressed excitement. Most of the
men there were accustomed to disputation of the sort which any Sunday
visitor to Victoria Park may hear going on there week after week.
Elsmere had made a vivid impression; and the prospect of a fight with
him had an unusual piquancy.'

Robert sprang up. 'When you will,' he said. 'I am ready to stand by what
I have just said in the face of you all, it you care to hear it.'

Place and particulars were hastily arranged, subject to the approval
of the club committee, and Elsmere's audience separated in a glow of
curiosity and expection.

'Didn't I tell ye?' the gas-fitter's snarling friend said to him.
'Scratch him and you find the parson. Then upper-class folk, when they
come among us poor ones, always seem to me just hunting for souls, as
those Injuns he was talking about last week hunt for scalps. They can't
go to heaven without a certain number of 'em slung about 'em.'

'Wait a bit!' said the gas-fitter, his quick dark eyes betraying a
certain raised inner temperature.

Next morning the North R---- Club was placarded with announcements that
on Easter Eve next Robert Elsmere, Esq., would deliver a lecture in the
Debating Hall on 'The Claim of Jesus upon Modern Life;' to be followed,
as usual, by general discussion.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

It was the afternoon of Good Friday. Catherine had been to church at
St. Paul's, and Robert, though