as much sang froid as if he had been doing it all his life. Mr. Marwood himself could not have bettered the way in which Peter said,
"We will sing the whole hymn, omitting the fourth stanza."
That was a fine touch which I had not thought of. I began to think that, after all, Peter might be a foeman worthy of my steel.
When Peter was ready to begin he thrust his hands into his pockets—a totally unorthodox thing. Then he plunged in without further ado, speaking in his ordinary conversational tone—another unorthodox thing. There was no shorthand reporter present to take that sermon down; but, if necessary, I could preach it over verbatim, and so, I doubt not, could every one who heard it. It was not a forgettable kind of sermon.
"Dearly beloved," said Peter, "my sermon is about the bad place—in short, about hell."
An electric shock seemed to run through the audience. Everybody looked suddenly alert. Peter had, in one sentence, done what my whole sermon had failed to do. He had made an impression.
"I shall divide my sermon into three heads," pursued Peter. "The first head is, what you must not do if you don't want to go to the bad place. The second head is, what the bad place is like"—sensation in the audience—"and the third head is, how to escape going there.
"Now, there's a great many things you must not
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