Thereupon "Pund o' Cannles," excellent but close-fisted tallow chandler and general dealer, proceeded to rebuke Cleg. Now the rebukes of "Pund o' Cannles" smelt of the counter, and were delivered in the tones in which he addressed his apprentice boys when there were no customers in the shop—a tone which was entirely different from the bland suavity which he used when he joined his hands and asked, "And what is the next article, madam?" "Do you know, boy," said the superintendent, "that by such sinful conduct you are wilfully going on the downward road? You are a wicked boy, and instead of becoming better under your kind teacher, and taking advantage of the many advantages of this place devoted to religious instruction, you stick pins—brass pins—into better conducted boys than yourself. And so, if you do not repent, God will take you in your iniquity and cast you into hell. For, remember, God sees everything and punishes the bad people and rewards the good." The superintendent uttered, though he knew it not, the most ancient of heresies—that which Job refuted. It was at this point in the oration of "Pund o' Cannles" that Cleg Kelly's startling interruption occurred. The culprit stopped making O's on the dusty floor with his toe, amongst the moist paper pellets which were the favourite distraction of the inattentive at Hunker Court; and, in a clear voice, which thrilled through the heart of every teacher and scholar within hearing, he uttered his denial of the eternity of the Trinity. "It's all a dumb lie—God's dead!" he said. There was a long moment's silence, and small wonder, as the school waited for the shivering trump of doom to split the firmament. And the patient and self-sacrificing teachers who gave their unthanked care to the youth of the court every Sunday, felt their breaths come short, and experienced a feeling as if they were falling over a precipice in a dream. At last Mr. James Lugton found his voice. "Young and wicked blasphemer!" he said sternly, "your presence must no longer, like that of the serpent in Paradise, poison the instruction given at this Sabbath school—I shall expel you from our midst——" Here Cleg's teacher interposed. He was far from disliking his scholar, and had anticipated no such result arising from his most unfortunate reference of his difficulty to the superintendent. For he liked Cleg's ready tongue, and was amused by the mongrel dialect of Scots and Irish into which, in moments of excitement, he lapsed. "I beg pardon, sir," he said, "but I am quite willing to give Kelly another chance—he is not such a bad boy as you might think."