"And yet," said Lambourne, "I have been in cities where such learned
commodities would have been deemed too good for such offices."

"Pshaw, pshaw," answered Foster, "'they are Popish trash, every one
of them--private studies of the mumping old Abbot of Abingdon. The
nineteenthly of a pure gospel sermon were worth a cartload of such
rakings of the kennel of Rome."

"Gad-a-mercy, Master Tony Fire-the-Fagot!" said Lambourne, by way of
reply.

Foster scowled darkly at him, as he replied, "Hark ye, friend Mike;
forget that name, and the passage which it relates to, if you would not
have our newly-revived comradeship die a sudden and a violent death."

"Why," said Michael Lambourne, "you were wont to glory in the share you
had in the death of the two old heretical bishops."

"That," said his comrade, "was while I was in the gall of bitterness and
bond of iniquity, and applies not to my walk or my ways now that I
am called forth into the lists. Mr. Melchisedek Maultext compared my
misfortune in that matter to that of the Apostle Paul, who kept the
clothes of the witnesses who stoned Saint Stephen. He held forth on the
matter three Sabbaths past, and illustrated the same by the conduct of
an honourable person present, meaning me."

"I prithee peace, Foster," said Lambourne, "for I know not how it is, I
have a sort of creeping comes over my skin when I hear the devil quote
Scripture; and besides, man, how couldst thou have the heart to quit
that convenient old religion, which you could slip off or on as easily
as your glove? Do I not remember how you were wont to carry your
conscience to confession, as duly as the month came round? and when thou
hadst it scoured, and burnished, and whitewashed by the priest, thou
wert ever ready for the worst villainy which could be devised, like a
child who is always readiest to rush into the mire when he has got his
Sunday's clean jerkin on."