“Sink them all for parsons, says I,” growled Moody; “hungry beggars, as never thinks their bellies full till they have robbed all and everything.”

“Who’s to harm you, man?” argued Spriggs: “let them look never so black at you, they can’t get you put out when you’re once in—no, not old Catgut, with Calves to help him!” I am sorry to say the archdeacon himself was designated by this scurrilous allusion to his nether person.

“A hundred a year to win, and nothing to lose,” continued Handy, “my eyes!—Well, how a man’s to doubt about such a bit of cheese as that passes me—but some men is timorous—some men is born with no pluck in them—some men is cowed at the very first sight of a gen’leman’s coat and waistcoat.”

Oh, Mr. Harding, if you had but taken the archdeacon’s advice in that disputed case, when Joe Mutters was this ungrateful demagogue’s rival candidate!

“Afraid of a parson,” growled Moody, with a look of ineffable scorn; “I tell ye what I’d be afraid of—I’d be afraid of not getting nothing from ’em but just what I could take by might and right—that’s the most I’d be afraid on of any parson of ’em all.”

“But,” said Skulpit, apologetically, “Mr. Harding’s not so bad—he did give us twopence a day, didn’t he now?”

“Twopence a day!” exclaimed Spriggs with scorn, opening awfully the red cavern of his lost eye.

“Twopence a day!” muttered Moody with a curse; “sink his twopence!”

“Twopence a day!” exclaimed Handy; “and I’m to go, hat in hand, and thank a chap for twopence a day, when he owes me a hundred pounds a year: no, thank ye; that may do for you, but it won’t for me. Come, I say, Skulpit, are you a going to put your mark to this here paper, or are you not?”

Skulpit looked round in wretched indecision to his two friends. “What d’ye think, Bill Gazy?” said he.

But Billy Gazy couldn’t think: he made a noise like the bleating of an old sheep, which was intended to express the agony of his doubt, and again muttered that “he didn’t know.”

“Take hold, you old cripple,” said Handy, thrusting the pen into poor Billy’s hand: “there, so—ugh! you old fool, you’ve been and smeared it all—there—that’ll do for you,—that’s as good as the best name as ever was written:” and a big blotch of ink was presumed to represent Billy Gazy’s acquiescence.

“Now, Jonathan,” said Handy, turning to Crumple.

“A hundred a year’s a nice thing, for sartain,” again argued Crumple. “Well, neighbour Skulpit, how’s it to be?”

“Oh, please yourself,” said Skulpit: “please yourself, and you’ll please me.”

The pen was thrust into Crumple’s hand, and a faint, wandering, meaningless sign was made, betokening such sanction and authority as Jonathan Crumple was able to convey.

“Come, Joe,” said Handy, softened by success, “don’t let ’em have to say that old Bunce has a man like you under his thumb—a man that always holds his head in the hospital as high as Bunce himself, though you’re never axed to drink wine, and sneak, and tell lies about your betters, as he does.”

Skulpit held the pen, and made little flourishes with it in the air, but still hesitated.