e a seat, pray,
sir. Have a glass of wine?"

His civilities received no answer. The falcon in the black coat
proceeded,--

"What do I talk about the gift of tongues? Gift, indeed! I mistook the
chapter, and book, and Testament--gospel for law, Acts for Genesis, the
city of Jerusalem for the plain of Shinar. It was no gift but the
confusion of tongues which has gabbled me deaf as a post. _You_,
apostles? What! you three? Certainly not; three presumptuous Babylonish
masons--neither more nor less!"

"I assure you, sir, we were only having a little chat together over a
glass of wine after a friendly dinner--settling the Dissenters!"

"Oh! settling the Dissenters, were you? Was Malone settling the
Dissenters? It sounded to me much more like settling his co-apostles.
You were quarrelling together, making almost as much noise--you three
alone--as Moses Barraclough, the preaching tailor, and all his hearers
are making in the Methodist chapel down yonder, where they are in the
thick of a revival. I know whose fault it is.--It is yours, Malone."

"Mine, sir?"

"Yours, sir. Donne and Sweeting were quiet before you came, and would be
quiet if you were gone. I wish, when you crossed the Channel, you had
left your Irish habits behind you. Dublin student ways won't do here.
The proceedings which might pass unnoticed in a wild bog and mountain
district in Connaught will, in a decent English parish, bring disgrace
on those who indulge in them, and, what is far worse, on the sacred
institution of which they are merely the humble appendages."

There was a certain dignity in the little elderly gentleman's manner of
rebuking these youths, though it was not, perhaps, quite the dignity
most appropriate to the occasion. Mr. Helstone, standing straight as a
ramrod, looking keen as a kite, presented, despite his clerical hat,
black coat, and gaiters, more the air of a veteran officer chiding his
subalterns than of a venerable priest exhorting his sons in the faith.
Gospel mildness, apostolic benignity, never seemed to have breathed
their influence over that keen brown visage, but firmness had fixed the
features, and sagacity had carved her own lines about them.

"I met Supplehough," he continued, "plodding through the mud this wet
night, going to preach at Milldean opposition shop. As I told you, I
heard Barraclough bellowing in the midst of a conventicle like a
possessed bull; and I find _you_, gentlemen, tarrying over your
half-pint