Ephraim flushed with pride and pleasure when told what was expected of him. He felt it to be a great honor--the greatest that had ever been accorded him. He had plenty of self-confidence, and never for a moment doubted his ability to pass creditably through the ordeal. Although not the least bit nervous, he lay awake a great part of the night, thinking of the morrow, and turning over a variety of texts in his mind, each of which seemed to afford scope for amplification and illustration, before finally deciding on a particular one. Of course his discourse, like Mr. Hoskins' own, was to be wholly extempore: not a note or scrap of paper would he take with him to the desk--placed on a platform a couple of feet above the floor--from behind which Mr. Hoskins was in the habit of holding forth to his somewhat limited congregation. It had never been Ephraim's lot to break down, nor even to hesitate for longer than a passing moment owing to a paucity of language in which to give expression to his ideas. Rather did he suffer from a plenitude of words, finding that his ideas--such as they were--were capable of being clothed in so many different suits of verbiage that he had often to put a curb on himself, lest, in the heat and fervor of his fluency, he should impose upon his hearers by giving them the same thought more than twice over. A proud man was Ephraim when he arose and dressed himself that Sunday morning. For the time being the prickings of his conscience were forgotten, or perhaps it would be better to say that they were thrust remorselessly into the background. At length the opportunity for which he had so often longed had offered itself: to-day he would be able to show of what stuff he was made. Hitherto the majority of his co-religionists had only known from hearsay of the gift that was in him. At length they would be brought directly into contact with it, and would be in a position to judge of it for themselves. Evidently Ephraim Judd was not one of those foolish people who are content to hide their light under a bushel. Scarcely less elated, in her own quiet, undemonstrative way, was Mrs. Judd, who was a staunch Templetonian. It was far more, from her point of view, that her son should be an eloquent expounder of the tenets of the sect to which they both belonged than that he should be a rising official at Avison's Bank, with a prosperous and assured future stretching clearly before him. The meeting-house of the Templetonians was filled this morning to repletion. Never had Mr. Hoskins succeeded in gathering round him so numerous a congregation. The news that Ephraim Judd was to discourse had spread in some mysterious way, the consequence being that there was a large influx of strangers belonging to the other sects who were drawn there out of curiosity to hear the rising young local preacher, the fame of whose untutored eloquence had not failed to reach their ears.