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."

"Trouble not thyself about my conscience," said Foster; "it is a thing
thou canst not understand, having never had one of thine own. But let
us rather to the point, and say to me, in one word, what is thy business
with me, and what hopes have drawn thee hither?"

"The hope of bettering myself, to be sure," answered Lambourne, "as the
old woman said when she leapt over the bridge at Kingston. Look you,
this purse has all that is left of as round a sum as a man would wish to
carry in his slop-pouch. You are here well established, it would seem,
and, as I think, well befriended, for men talk of thy being under some
special protection--nay, stare not like a pig that is stuck, mon;
thou canst not dance in a net and they not see thee. Now I know such