It was soon notorious in Milby that Mr.Tryan held peculiar opinions; that he preached extempore; that he was founding a religious lending library in his remote corner of the parish; that he expounded the Scriptures in cottages; and that his preaching was attracting the Dissenters, and filling the very aisles of his church.

The rumour sprang up that Evangelicalism had invaded Milby parish--a murrain or blight all the more terrible, because its nature was but dimly conjectured.

Perhaps Milby was one of the last spots to be reached by the wave of a new movement and it was only now, when the tide was just on the turn, that the limpets there got a sprinkling.

Mr.Tryan was the first Evangelical clergyman who had risen above the Milby horizon: hitherto that obnoxious adjective had been unknown to the townspeople of any gentility; and there were even many Dissenters who considered 'evangelical' simply a sort of baptismal name to the magazine which circulated among the congregation of Salem Chapel.

But now, at length, the disease had been imported, when the parishioners were expecting it as little as the innocent Red Indians expected smallpox.