hey would, nevertheless stand
no chance against St Paul, for he was inspired; the miracle would have
been if the wild beasts escaped, not that St Paul should have done so;
but, however all this might be, Ernest felt that he dared not begin to
convert Mr Holt by fighting him. Why, when he had heard Mrs Holt
screaming "murder," he had cowered under the bed clothes and waited,
expecting to hear the blood dripping through the ceiling on to his own
floor. His imagination translated every sound into a pat, pat, pat, and
once or twice he thought he had felt it dropping on to his counterpane,
but he had never gone upstairs to try and rescue poor Mrs Holt. Happily
it had proved next morning that Mrs Holt was in her usual health.

Ernest was in despair about hitting on any good way of opening up
spiritual communication with his neighbour, when it occurred to him that
he had better perhaps begin by going upstairs, and knocking very gently
at Mr Holt's door. He would then resign himself to the guidance of the
Holy Spirit, and act as the occasion, which, I suppose, was another name
for the Holy Spirit, suggested. Triply armed with this reflection, he
mounted the stairs quite jauntily, and was about to knock when he heard
Holt's voice inside swearing savagely at his wife. This made him pause
to think whether after all the moment was an auspicious one, and while he
was thus pausing, Mr Holt, who had heard that someone was on the stairs,
opened the door and put his head out. When he saw Ernest, he made an
unpleasant, not to say offensive movement, which might or might not have
been directed at Ernest and looked altogether so ugly that my hero had an
instantaneous and unequivocal revelation from the Holy Spirit to the
effect that he should continue his journey upstairs at once, as though he
had never intended arresting it at Mr Holt's room, and begin by
converting Mr and Mrs Baxter, the Methodists in the top floor front. So
this was what he did.

These good people received him with open arms, and were quite ready to
talk. He was beginning to convert them from Methodism to the Church of
England, when all at once he found himself embarrassed by discovering
that he did not know what he was to convert them from. He knew the
Church of England, or thought he did, but he knew nothing of Methodism
beyond its name. When he found that, according to Mr Baxter, the
Wesleyans had a vigorous system of Church discipline (which worked
admir