CHAPTER VI.

THE BIRTH OF A NEW EXPERIENCE.

"HURRAH! hurrah!" burst forth from some stentorian listener, "that's the ticket for me. Let me go; I'll sign the pledge, if nobody else will-fifty guineas a year-I'm your man ;' " and in fewer seconds than it takes words to tell, there leaped upon the central table in a right line with the chairman's nose, a stout, curly-headed youth, in a state of the wildest excitement-Jamie Simpson. Envious girls whispered ill-naturedly, so as to let Polly hear, "I declare if he isn't drunk-poor Polly!" "It's a lie and you know it, you nasty spiteful thing!" was the retort of Jamie's lovely champion. But little did the chairman or the new convert calculate on the tempest and the combat which that clinching argument was about to stir up. Jamie was, in his way, a choice spirit, and though not a sot, he was the boon companion of many who were; he was a judge of beer, and he dealt leniently with publicans by virtue of a private understanding when the beer happened to be just a little thundered—and the brewer's men had only last night almost broken his back ribs with their hearty congratulations on his pluck, when he told them he'd some thoughts of keeping a public himself as soon as he'd got fairly wed. He had viewed with philosophical indifference the falling away from good fellowship of many of his companions; for he knew, so he said, it wouldn't last long. Truth will tell though, that he felt as if a mine had been sprung very near his feet indeed, when, not from mere rumour, but from his own lips, he heard of Drum's conversion, and he felt disposed to taunt the little drummer about how much he'd got for it, and then souse him in the water-butt, but he didn't; and this day seemed to have been marked out of all days in the calendar for his special annoyance of conscience; first in the gardens, and then in the prosy old gentleman's harangues, and now at the meeting-and, finally, for his particular deliverance out of the snares of the fowler.

Loud cries of joy, too intense for any other form of expression but that of bawling, hailed the approach of the new recruit, and as he paced along the centre of the three planks of which the tables were constructed, even the ladies gave no heed to the dirty marks of his hob-nailed boots, and energetically flipped with their pocket-handerchiefs at his corduroy trowsers. But the return of this prodigal was not destined to be a continuous ovation; the way of escape, indeed, was clear, but he didn't run as he ought to have done he was uplifted in his heart, and the intoxication of applause was soothing to his nerves. And yet there were swift and desperate foes in his rear. Bully Kilderkin, the mashing man at the great brewhouse, beheld this spectacle at first with inconceivable dismay-he was utterly stunned; but reviving consciousness rendered him open to such practical suggestions as "Fetch him back, Bully, fetch him back. Bring him off, Bully, and we'll bottle him till he gets his senses;" and it needed no special urgency to press Bully into this, as he thought, patriotic service. He was grieved as well as shocked-he "couldn't never have thought it of Jim he was sure he wasn't right in his head he'd have him down, by the Lord, he would, in a jiffy;" and with one bound, like a barrel that has broken loose from the drags, he rolled on to the table in the wake of the unsuspecting novice, crunching and rattling the boards as he wentlike Neptune, the earth-shaker of old, friends and foes greeting him at every step with salutuations of which he took no heed, as "Go it, Billy; give it the white-haired spooney ;" or, You be off with you, it's none o' your concern. One moment more, and his victim would have been in his embrace. The pretty frightened lasses caught hold of his gaiters to hold him back from the fell purpose of his soul, but he shook them off like flies, and trod upon their fingers till they screamed. But victory, like a hovering eagle, wavered in mid-air, if anybody could have seen it; it once nearly alighted on his head, but just at that precise moment, a combined movement of a relieving party took him in the flank, and as if he had been felled like an ox, he lay supine, in the very moment of victory, biting the dust, and over

whelmed by the interlaced and struggling arms and legs of every member of the band. New confusion soon broke out; there were at least 300 stalwart drinkers there who would not tamely see their chieftain fall; and his fellow-chiefs, his staff, his should-be body-guard, were they remiss? By no means; but as they could not get either at him or at his immediate foes, they scattered themselves like wolves among a flock, and kicked and elbowed and stamped upon every luckless individual that looked as if he didn't drink. What might have been the issue, whether as fatal as it was already sanguinary, we cannot say, for when the tumult was at its height, the clarionet man availed himself of a breathing space to shout at the top of his voice, "Mr. Chairman-order-please sir, the brewer's mens' master is at the back of the platform; ask him if he ain't ashamed of his goings on "This gentleman, who was short-sighted, and, as was likely enough in the circumstances, right back on the platform, near the judge's door, could not resist the appeal which was thus addressed to him point-blank, and advancing to the front, he said, in a loud and stern voice, that "If the men in his employ did not instantly cease from taking part in the disturbance, he would dismiss the pack of them tomorrow morning, even if he shut up his place"-having said this, he presented a cheque for ten pounds to the chairman for the funds of a Society which sought to raise the working class; for he was, you must know, what is called an eminent brewer (it sounds funny rather, but it means), one who got all his money by degrading his fellow men, and gave away a good deal to raise them up again. As soon as his threat was understood, his men yielded with a bad grace to the hardship of defeat; and of course there was acclamation in the victors' camp, while the draymen and others, with the mashing man to the front, sulkily abandoned the field and the hall together, and repaired to the back tap of the "Justice's Wig," to concert private reprisals on the unfortunate clarionet man as he came out of the meeting.

CHAPTER VII.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF FACT.

ORDER was at length restored, and it was amidst the solemn silence into which the uproarious exultation of the band had subsided, that Jamie signed his name in full, in large round hand, to the pledge of abstinence. It seemed as if the meet

ing were now about to close, and not a few, shaken by the fright they had just had, hoped that it would. None seemed willing to speak, and none were anxious to hear; but in the meeting, at the lower end, a singular being rose at once to observation and to speak. He inquired of the chairman whether that was a meeting of free-born Englishmen, and if so, was any one free to ask a question? "Yes, certainly," was the reply, "so that the question be to the point." The iuquirer was an elderly and lank man, with both shoulders much above the military level, and one shoulder much above the level of the other. His long, thin grey hair environed a face that was peculiarly fierce and dogmatic in its expression, and an air of study and philosophy was imparted to the entire man by a well-slung pair of tortoise-shell spectacles. Nobody knew who he was, and he didn't appear anxious to tell.

"He wished to observe, then," he said, "that he was a rational being, and would listen to reason-that he was not one of those who were led by the nose, that is, by their feelings; but he was of a scientific turn, and very fond of logic and chemistry, and that sort of thing, and he only wished he knew something about them, but he didn't. Still he thought he had a right, on an occasion so serious as the present, to ask the chairman one question, and that was, Was not alcohol found in the human body, and in nature generally; and if so, was it not sheer blasphemy to sign the pledge?-He hoped he was as open to conviction as another; but again he would protest against being led by the nose. The grounds on which he had wrought out his own opinions on this question (which opinion nothing that might be said could ever change) were the most authoritative and sacred that

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could be presented to the mind of man. He didn't mean the Bible. He thought he was rather too old a bird to be caught by that kind of thing,-but he meant the assertion of a deceased mother, who, years ago, assured him that her mother had made treacle out of potatoes, and she, his mother, pursuing the discovery, had succeeded in extracting rum from that treacle to that extent that it had made her beastly drunk. Now, sir, I want to know what you can say to that fact? 'Facts are stubborn things.'

The chairman replied :

"That he was quite willing to regard the rather solemn testimony of the inquirer to the interesting matter of fact related, as valid, and also to accept it as another added to the many proofs already existing, that alcohol is very extensively found in the human body; but he imagined that in all likelihood the majority of cases would show that the human body had put the alcohol into itself. As to the general question, whether alcohol existed in nature, apart from the various kinds of fermentation, he could only say, that there was at length some little doubt; for those French chemists never let any firm belief rest long together without discovering something that threatened to overturn it; but he felt disposed to rest the question on the horns of this dilemma (the gentleman likes logic). Either alcohol is found in the human system naturally, or it isn't. If the latter be the case, he concluded that the Creator saw no vital necessity for it: if the former, then, doubtless, there was no occasion for man to trouble himself, and risk his salvation for the purpose of putting it there."

The fierce man snappishly declared that he was satisfied— "perfectly satisfied," he said, with a grim sneer, "satisfied that the whole thing was humbug, and that they were a lot of Jesuits, conspiring to fetter and prostrate the natural reason of the human race.!" and he sank down, perspiring greatly, and universally cut by all the "Friends of Home for ten yards round. His scholarly pretensions, however, exerted an influence in the inverse ratio of distance; and at the other tables, where they could not discern his greasy coat and dirty hands and very virile beard, there was

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