After that the building of the chapel went on apace, the large tradesman from Salisbury being quicker in his work than could have been the small tradesman belonging to Bullhampton. In February there came a hard frost, and still the bricklayers were at work. It was said in Bullhampton that walls built as those walls were being built could never stand. But then it might be that these reports were spread by Mr. Grimes, that the fanatical ardour of the Salisbury Baptist lent something to the rapidity of his operations, and that the Bullhampton feeling in favour of Mr. Fenwick and the Church Establishment added something to the bitterness of the prevailing criticisms. At any rate, the walls of the new chapel were mounting higher and higher all through February, and by the end of the first week in March there stood immediately opposite to the Vicarage gate a hideously ugly building, roofless, doorless, windowless;--with those horrid words,--"New Salem, 186--" legibly inscribed on a visible stone inserted above the doorway, a thing altogether as objectionable to the eyes of a Church of England parish clergyman as the imagination of any friend or enemy could devise. We all know the abominable adjuncts of a new building,--the squalid half-used heaps of bad mortar, the eradicated grass, the truculent mud, the scattered brickbats, the remnants of timber, the debris of the workmen's dinners, the morsels of paper scattered through the dirt! There had from time to time been actual encroachments on the Vicarage grounds, and Mrs. Fenwick, having discovered that the paint had been injured on the Vicarage gate, had sent an angry message to the Salisbury Baptist. The Salisbury Baptist had apologised to Mr. Fenwick, saying that such things would happen in the building of houses, &c., and Mr. Fenwick had assured him that the matter was of no consequence. He was not going to descend into the arena with the Salisbury Baptist. In this affair the Marquis of Trowbridge was his enemy, and with the Marquis he would fight, if there was to be any fight at all. He would stand at his gate and watch the work, and speak good-naturedly to the workmen; but he was in truth sick at heart. The thing, horrible as it was to him, so fascinated him that he could not keep his mind from it. During all this time it made his wife miserable. She had literally grown thin under the infliction of the new chapel. For more than a fortnight she had refused to visit the front gate of her own house. To and from church she always went by the garden wicket; but in going to the school, she had to make a long round to avoid the chapel,--and this round she made day after day. Fenwick himself, still hoping that there might be some power of fighting, had written to an enthusiastic archdeacon, a friend of his, who lived not very far distant. The Archdeacon had consulted the Bishop,--really troubled deeply about the matter,--and the Bishop had taken upon