In this way, and others, the idea of brotherly kindness was spreading; indeed, there was scarcely a church or chapel in connection with which there was not some new activity; and, what was better still, that New Year’s Day was, by common consent, devoted to self-examination on the part of those who professed to be the servants and followers of Jesus Christ; and not only where men and women were assembled together, but in the quietude of their own rooms thousands were asking and answering, as in the presence of God, the question which had haunted Dr. Stapleton, “Am I a Christian?” For the Doctor himself the answer had been found by many people in Scourby, who had decided in the negative. He was so woefully altered, he looked so miserable and ill, he had aged so greatly in a few months, he was so utterly unlike his former self, that, forgetful of the charity which thinketh no evil, some who had been his friends had convinced themselves that only a guilty conscience could account for the change in him, and had treated him accordingly. Quite how the scandal grew no one could tell; but Stapleton had the bitterness of knowing himself entirely unpopular and disregarded. Ladies passed him in the public ways without recognition. Men, if they saw him coming, turned into side streets; and things came to such a pass with him that at last he wondered if he had a real and staunch friend left in the town where, less than a year ago, he could have counted them by hundreds. The people of Scourby were feeling bad-tempered with everything and every one, because they considered themselves disgraced. The example set by the town had been followed in other places, and Mr. Richard Lavender had three men likeminded with himself to keep him in countenance, since they also had been sent to Westminster, not as either Conservatives or Liberals, but, as they themselves said, as Anarchists, and in opposition to Religion and Respectability. These four men unwittingly did more for their country than they intended. At Scourby there was much bickering between Churchmen and Dissenters, who each blamed the other for what had happened. But they were united in declaring that something must be done, so that at the next general election that which was intolerable to them should be avoided.