perfection of
his own handiwork when he could slur over a job without fear of
detection; while the standard of morality which he set up for himself,
certainly, to judge by his own daily life, did not speak much for the
acuteness of his moral perceptions.

But he was shrewd and ready, and had a memory well stored with such
parts of Scripture as were useful pegs on which to hang clever
objections and profane sneers. Not that he had read the Bible itself,
for all his knowledge of it was got second-hand from the works of
sceptics, and in detached fragments. However, he had learned and
retained a smattering of a good many scientific and other works, and so
could astonish and confound timid and ill-informed opponents.

No wonder, therefore, that he was the admired chairman of the
"Crossbourne Free-thought Club," which met two or three times a week in
one of the public-houses, and consumed, for the benefit of the house,
but certainly not of the members themselves or their homes, a large
quantity of beer and spirits, while it was setting the misguided world
right on science, politics, and religion. The marvel, indeed, to Foster
and his friends was how ignorance, bigotry, priestcraft, and tyranny
could venture to hold up their heads in Crossbourne after his club had
continued its meeting regularly for the last two years.

Perhaps they might have been a little less surprised could one of them
have taken down an old volume of Dr South's sermons from the vicar's
library shelves, and have read these words to his fellows: "Men are
infidels, not because they have sharper wits, but because they have
corrupter wills; not because they reason better, but because they live
worse." Assuredly this was true of the infidelity in Crossbourne.

And what sort of a home was William Foster's? The house itself looked
well enough as you approached it. Those houses of a humbler stamp on
either side of it had doors which opened at once from the street into
the parlour or living-room; but to Foster's dwelling there was a small
entrance-hall, terminating in an archway, beyond which were a large
parlour, a kitchen, and a staircase leading to the upper rooms.

There was an air of ambition about everything, as though the premises,
like their occupiers, were aiming to be something above their station,
while at the same time a manifest absence of cleanliness and neatness
only presented a sort of satirical contrast to the surrounding grandeur.

On