end of the world is coming, and they and the devil only know what. If I
meet one of them, I'll wring his neck, and be hanged for it! Oh, you
parsons! you parsons!" and Tom ground his teeth with rage.

"Is it possible? How did you find this out?"

"Mrs. Heale had been in, listening to their howling, just before she was
taken. Heale went in when I turned him out of doors; came home raving
mad, and is all but blue now. Three cases of women have I had this
morning, all frightened into cholera, by their own confession, by last
night's tomfoolery.--Came home howling, fainted, and were taken before
morning. One is dead, the other two will die. You must stop it, or I
shall have half-a-dozen more to-night. Go into the meeting, and curse the
cur to his face!"

"I cannot," cried Frank, with a gesture of despair, "I cannot!"

"Ah, your cloth forbids you, I suppose, to enter the non-conformist
opposition shop."

"You are unjust, Thurnall! What are such rules at a moment like this?
I'd break them, and the bishop would hold me guiltless. But I cannot
speak to these people. I have no eloquence--no readiness--they do not
trust me--would not believe me--God help me!" and Frank covered his face
with his hands, and burst into tears.

"Not that, for Heaven's sake!" said Tom, "or we shall have you blue
next, my good fellow. I'd go myself, but they'd not hear me, for
certain; I am no Christian, I suppose: at least, I can't talk their
slang:--but I know who can! We'll send Campbell!"

Frank hailed the suggestion with rapture, and away they went: but they
had an hour's good search from sufferer to sufferer before they found
the Major.

He heard them quietly. A severe gloom settled over his face. "I will
go," said he.

At six o'clock that evening, the meeting-house was filling with
terrified women, and half-curious, half-sneering, men; and among them
the tall figure of Major Campbell, in his undress uniform (which he had
put on, wisely, to give a certain dignity to his mission), stalked in,
and took his seat in the back benches.

The sermon was what he expected. There is no need to transcribe it. Such
discourses may be heard often enough in churches as well as chapels. The
preacher's object seemed to be--for some purpose or other which we have
no right to judge--to excite in his hearers the utmost intensity of
selfish fear, by language which certainly, as Tom had said, came under
the law against profane cursing and swearing. He des