Tobias settled himself in a chair, and kicked a
coal from the bars of the grate.
"Tom is very strong against religious fanaticism," he said,
laughing. "I have to pull him up now and then. I suppose you heard
about the crazy goings-on down here in the summer?"
"Not I. Revivalist meetings?"
"The whole town was turned upside down. Such frenzy among the women
I never witnessed. Three times a day they flocked in swarms to the
Public Hall, and there screeched and wept and fainted, till it
really looked as if some authority ought to interfere. If I had had
my way, I would have drummed the preachers out of the town. Mary and
Mrs. Wade and one or two others were about the only women who
escaped the epidemic. Seriously, it led to a good deal of domestic
misery. Poor Tomkins's wife drove him to such a pass by her
scandalous neglect of the house, that one morning he locked her into
her bedroom, and there he kept her on very plain diet for three
days. We thought of getting up a meeting to render public thanks to
Tomkins, and to give him some little testimonial."
Denzil uttered roars of laughter; the story was exactly of the kind
that made appeal to his humorous instincts.
"Has the ferment subsided?" he asked.
"Tolerably well; leaving a good deal of froth and scum, however. The
worst of it was that, in the very week when those makebates had
departed, there came down on us a second plague, in the shape of
Mrs.
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