Under this strict regime, as was to be expected, there was not a little restlessness at Bethesda, as the chapel was called. The young preacher was popular, but not, alas! with the soberer and elder portion of the congregation. The deacons were sorely puzzled how to act; some questioned whether the young student had the root of the matter in him, and many were their meetings. Let us go amongst them, as they are at tea, and in the house of one of them, the leading tradesman of the town, a dear old deacon, who from the time he had known the Lord, as he termed it, had never known a doubt, and to whom no sermon was tolerable that did not begin with ruin and end with regeneration and redemption. The house in which he resided was one of the most respectable in the High Street. It was entered by the side door, and not through the shop—that was of itself a sign of gentility. On the present occasion, all the company have come in by the private door, and, dressed in black, you might have taken them for a gathering of the brethren, so thoroughly clerical was their look and demeanour. Of course, they were all professors, as they were called, not of music or mathematics, but of religion. The head of the party, in whose parlour they were seated, and of whose hospitality they were partaking, was the senior deacon of the Independent Chapel. His parents were very poor, but they had sent him to school, and were specially careful that he should be a Sunday scholar. In a little while he became a Sunday-school teacher, and that was a feather in his cap, and helped him to pray and make speeches in public. One of the friends thus gained was a small shopkeeper, who in consequence took Ned Robins, as he was called, into his employ. The lad was steady, of a cold temperament, very selfish, and ambitious to rise in the world. He had no wish nor temptation to be otherwise. He was always at his post, never went to the public-house, never wanted to go to a race, or a fair, or a rowing match, never wished for a holiday, and, consequently, never took one. He had married his master’s daughter; he had courted her on a Sunday when they went to chapel together—that is, they sat in the same pew and sang out of the same hymn-book—and as everyone said they ought to make a match of it, they did so accordingly. By that match he became proprietor of the business, which grew as the town grew, so as to become really worth having. His boys were in the business; his daughters, with the exception of one of them, rather prettier than the rest, were all members of the church, and had married other tradesmen in the town. A good tea did he give his friends, in the best parlour, with the very best tea-things. Truly, he had much to be thankful for. He had never dishonoured a bill, and his good name was unquestioned. If he occasionally sold adulterated articles, that was the fault of the manufacturer, not his. His favourite verse was,