“Your mistress is not in Liverpool. You don't know where she is. She has gone the way of all sinners,” said Cæsar.
“Is that what you're coming to tell me?” said Pete.
“No; we're coming to tell you,” said Cæsar, “that, as a notorious loose liver, we must be putting her out of class. And we're coming to call on yourself to look to your own salvation. You've deceaved us, Mr. Quilliam. You've grieved the Spirit of the Lord,” with another “glime” in the direction of Black Tom; “you've brought contempt on the fellowship that counts you for one of the fold. You've given the light of your countenance to the path of an evildoer, and you've brought down the head of a child of God with sorrow to the grave.”
Cæsar was moved by his self-satisfied piety, and began to make' noises in his nostrils. “Let us lay the case before the Lord,” he said; and he went down on his knees and prayed—
“Our brother has deceived us, O Lord, but we forgive him freely. Forgive Thou also his trespasses, so that at the last he escape hell-fire. Count not Thy handmaid for a daughter of Belial, wherever she is this day. May it be good for her to be cut off from the body of the righteous. Grant that she feel this mercy in her carnal body before her eternal soul be called to everlasting judgment. Lord, strengthen Thy servant. Let not his natural affections be as the snare of the fowler unto his feet. Though it grieve him sore, even to tears and tribulation, help him to pluck out the gourd that groweth in his own bosom——”
“Dear heart alive!” cried Nancy, clattering her clogs, “it's a wonder in the world the man isn't thinking shame to blacken his own daughter before the Almighty Himself.”
“Be merciful, O Lord,” continued Cæsar, “to all rank unbelievers, and such as live in heathen darkness in a Christian land, and don't know Saturday from Sunday, and are imper-ent uncommon and bad with the tongue——”
“Stop that now.” cried Nancy, “that's meant for me.”
Pete had stood through this in silence, but with an angry, miserable face.
“Beg pardon all,” he said. “I'm not going for denying to what you say. I'm like the fish at the heel of the trawl-boat—the net's closing in on me and I'm caught. The game's up. I did deceave you. I did write those letters myself. I've no Uncle Joe, nor no Auntie Joney neither. My wife's left me. I'm not knowing where she is, or what's becoming of her. I'm done, and I'm for throwing up the sponge.”