The work before the meeting was chiefly of a routine kind. In most places this would have been transacted by the stewards; but in Octavius these minor officials had degenerated into mere ceremonial abstractions, who humbly ratified, or by arrangement anticipated, the will of the powerful, mortgage-owning trustees. Theron sat languidly at the head of the table while these common-place matters passed in their course, noting the intonations of Gorringe's voice as he read from his secretary's book, and finding his ear displeased by them. No issue arose upon any of these trivial affairs, and the minister, feeling faint and weary in the heat, wondered why Sister Soulsby had insisted on his coming. All at once he sat up straight, with an instinctive warning in his mind that here was the thing. Gorringe had taken up the subject of the “debt-raising” evening, and read out its essentials as they had been embodied in a report of the stewards. The gross sum obtained, in cash and promises, was $1,860. The stewards had collected of this a trifle less than half, but hoped to get it all in during the ensuing quarter. There were, also, the bill of Mr. and Mrs. Soulsby for $150, and the increases of $100 in the pastor's salary and $25 in the apportioned contribution of the charge toward the Presiding Elder's maintenance, the two latter items of which the Quarterly Conference had sanctioned. “I want to hear the names of the subscribers and their amounts read out,” put in Brother Pierce. When this was done, it became apparent that much more than half of the entire amount had been offered by two men. Levi Gorringe's $450 and Erastus Winch's $425 left only $985 to be divided up among some seventy or eighty other members of the congregation. Brother Pierce speedily stopped the reading of these subordinate names. “They're of no concern whatever,” he said, despite the fact that his own might have been reached in time. “Those first names are what I was getting at. Have those two first amounts, the big ones, be'n paid?” “One has--the other not,” replied Gorringe. “PRE-cisely,” remarked the senior trustee. “And I'm goin' to move that it needn't be paid, either. When Brother Winch, here, began hollerin' out those extra twenty-fives and fifties, that evening, it was under a complete misapprehension. He'd be'n on the Cheese Board that same Monday afternoon, and he'd done what he thought was a mighty big stroke of business, and he felt liberal according. I know just what that feelin' is myself. If I'd be'n makin' a mint o' money, instead o' losin' all the while, as I do, I'd 'a' done just the same. But the next day, lo, and behold, Brother Winch found that it was all a mistake--he hadn't made a single penny.” “Fact is, I lost by the whole transaction,” put in Erastus Winch, defiantly.