The marquis grinned. “Nothing like a cleric for thinking of the main chance!” he said to himself. The bishop hesitated a few moments, looked up at the steps of the hotel, and hastened across the market-place as rapidly as his portly paunch and tight ecclesiastical shoes permitted. Mr. Massarene was standing on the top of the step with three of his supporters. The churchman took from his pocket a roll of thick vellum-like paper, evidently a memorial or a subscription-list. “For the rood-screen,” he murmured. “A transcendent work of art. And the restoration of the chauntry. Dear Mr. Massarene, with your admirable principles, I am sure we may count on your support?” William Massarene, with his gold pencil case between his thick finger and thumb, added his name to the list on the vellum-like scroll. The lord-lieutenant was on that list for twenty guineas; Lord Roxhall for ten guineas. William Massarene wrote himself down for two hundred guineas. “Back the Church for never forgetting to do business,” said the marquis with a chuckle to himself; and he too mounted the hotel steps as his ecclesiastical friend descended them, after warmly and blandly pressing the candidate’s hand and inviting him to dinner at the episcopal palace. “Booking a front seat in heaven, Mr. Massarene?” he cried out in his good-humored contemptuous voice. “Well, come, do something for earth too. You haven’t subscribed to the Thorpe Valley Hounds. Got to do it, you know. Hope you’re sound about Pug.” The marquis had been master of the pack for a dozen years. “I’m no sportsman,” said his victim, who had no notion who or what Pug was. “But if it’s the custom in the county----” “Of course it’s the custom of the county! Roxhall, poor fellow, was a staunch friend to us. You mustn’t be otherwise. We’ll draw Vale Royal coverts for cubs next October. Mind you’re sound about Pug.” “May I ask what Lord Roxhall subscribed?” “Fifty guineas,” said the M. F. H. truthfully. Mr. Massarene planted his legs a little further apart and thrust out his stomach. “I’ll give four fifties to the dogs,” he said with grandeur. “The dogs!” ejaculated the marquis; but he restrained his emotions and grasped his new subscriber’s hand cordially. “The Kennels and the Cathedral got the same measure,” he thought with amusement, as he nodded good-humoredly to the crowd below and entered the hotel to get a nip of something warm. “Deuced clever of the Bishop; I shouldn’t have thought of making the cad ‘part.’ What an eye the saints always have on the money-bags,” he thought as he drank some rum-punch.