Jack Fleming was not one of the Peculiar Children of God, nor had he any clear notion how severe a penalty was entailed by sacrilege; but the idea of climbing into any place of worship by night—church, chapel, or meeting-house—filled him with superstitious dread, besides alarming him in its legal aspect. “Don’t be a mad ass,” he adjured his friend. “What would you do if you did climb in?” “Oh, I don’t know. Just mess it up,” said Bram. “But supposing you were caught?” “Well, it would be worth a row. You don’t know my governor, Jack. If you knew him, you’d do anything that was worth while getting pi-jaws for. I get pi-jaws now for nothing. If you funk it, don’t stay with me. But I’m going to climb into that rotten old tabernacle, and if I can burn it up, I jolly well will burn it up.” Jack Fleming was seized with panic. Bram was always a mad sort of chap, but this project was far madder than anything of which he had fancied him capable. “Look here, I’ve got to be in soon,” he protested. “And you’ve farther to go than I have. Don’t play the giddy goat.” But Bram’s mind was dancing with the brightness of Blundell’s Diorama. He had no patience with the dull brain of his friend. “I tell you I’m going to climb in,” he insisted. “Well, I tell you I’m going home,” said Jack. “All right then, go!” Bram could not forbear shooting a poisoned shaft. “Only if there’s a row, don’t peach, that’s all I ask.” “You needn’t sneer at a fellow just because he doesn’t happen to be quite such a giddy goat as yourself,” said Jack. But Bram was riding over the deserts of Arabia: he was away on the prairies farther than Fenimore Cooper or Mayne Reid had ever taken him; Chimborazo towered above his horizon, not the chimney-pots of Brigham. “See you on Monday as usual,” he called back cheerfully to his friend as he leapt up and caught hold of the sill. A moment later his lithe shape had vanished in the darkness of Bethesda. Jack Fleming hesitated a moment: but after all he was not one of the Peculiar Children of God, and if it became a case for the magistrates, they might take a more serious view of his behaviour as the son of a church-going solicitor than of Bram’s, who was the grandson of a chief apostle. Jack turned his face homeward.