’Yes; the town is in an uproar.  As we were sitting in Mr. Landor’s drawing-room we heard a loud cheering, and presently Mr. Thrupp, the clerk at the bank, who had been waiting at the Red Lion to hear the result, came to let us know.  He said Dempster had been making a speech to the mob out the window.  They were distributing drink to the people, and hoisting placards in great letters,—­“Down with the Tryanites!” “Down with cant!” They had a hideous caricature of me being tripped-up and pitched head-foremost out of the pulpit.  Good old Mr. Landor would insist on sending me round in the carriage; he thought I should not be safe from the mob; but I got down at the Crossways.  The row was evidently preconcerted by Dempster before he set out.  He made sure of succeeding.’

Mr. Tryan’s utterance had been getting rather louder and more rapid in the course of this speech, and he now added, in the energetic chest-voice, which, both in and out of the pulpit, alternated continually with his more silvery notes,—­’But his triumph will be a short one.  If he thinks he can intimidate me by obloquy or threats, he has mistaken the man he has to deal with.  Mr. Dempster and his colleagues will find themselves checkmated after all.  Mr. Prendergast has been false to his own conscience in this business.  He knows as well as I do that he is throwing away the souls of the people by leaving things as they are in the parish.  But I shall appeal to the Bishop—­I am confident of his sympathy.’

‘The Bishop will be coming shortly, I suppose,’ said Miss Pratt, ’to hold a confirmation?’

’Yes; but I shall write to him at once, and lay the case before him.  Indeed, I must hurry away now, for I have many matters to attend to.  You, ladies, have been kindly helping me with your labours, I see,’ continued Mr. Tryan, politely, glancing at the canvass-covered books as he rose from his seat.  Then, turning to Mary Linnet:  ’Our library is really getting on, I think.  You and your sister have quite a heavy task of distribution now.’

Poor Rebecca felt it very hard to bear that Mr. Tryan did not turn towards her too.  If he knew how much she entered into his feelings about the lecture, and the interest she took in the library.  Well! perhaps it was her lot to be overlooked—­and it might be a token of mercy.  Even a good man might not always know the heart that was most with him.  But the next moment poor Mary had a pang, when Mr. Tryan turned to Miss Eliza Pratt, and the preoccupied expression of his face melted into that beaming timidity with which a man almost always addresses a pretty woman.

’I have to thank you, too, Miss Eliza, for seconding me so well in your visits to Joseph Mercer.  The old man tells me how precious he finds your reading to him, now he is no longer able to go to church.’