Such was the nature of the article, and the editor put it in. After all, what, in such matters, is an editor to do? Is it not his business to sell his paper? And if the editor of a Christian Examiner cannot trust the clergyman he has sat under, whom can he trust? Some risk an editor is obliged to run, or he will never sell his paper. There could be little doubt that such an article as this would be popular among the religious world of Littlebath, and that it would create a demand. He had his misgivings—had that poor editor. He did not feel quite sure of his lion and his lamb. He talked the matter over vehemently with Mr Maguire in the little room in which he occupied himself with his scissors and his paste; but ultimately the article was inserted. Who does not know that interval of triumph which warms a man’s heart when he has delivered his blow, and the return blow has not been yet received? The blow has been so well struck that it must be successful, nay, may probably be death-dealing. So felt Mr Maguire when two dozen copies of the Christian Examiner were delivered at his lodgings on the Saturday morning. The article, though printed as a leading article, had been headed as a little story,—“The Lion and the Lamb,”—so that it might more readily attract attention. It read very nicely in print. It had all that religious unction which is so necessary for Christian Examiners, and with it that spice of devilry, so delicious to humanity that without it even Christian Examiners cannot be made to sell themselves. He was very busy with his two dozen damp copies before him,—two dozen which had been sent to him, by agreement, as the price of his workmanship. He made them up and directed them with his own hand. To the lion and the lamb he sent two copies, two to each. To Mr Slow he sent a copy, and another to Messrs Slow and Bideawhile, and a third to the other lawyer. He sent a copy to Lady Ball and one to Sir John. Another he sent to the old Mackenzie, baronet at Incharrow, and two more to the baronet’s eldest son, and the baronet’s eldest son’s wife. A copy he sent to Mrs Tom Mackenzie, and a copy to Miss Colza; and a copy also he sent to Mrs Buggins. And he sent a copy to the Chairman of the Board at the Shadrach Fire Office, and another to the Chairman at the Abednego Life Office. A copy he sent to Mr Samuel Rubb, junior, and a copy to Messrs Rubb and Mackenzie. Out of his own pocket he supplied the postage stamps, and with his own hand he dropped the papers into the Littlebath post-office.

Poor Miss Mackenzie, when she read the article, was stricken almost to the ground. How she did hate the man whose handwriting on the address she recognised at once! What should she do? In her agony she almost resolved that she would start at once for the Cedars and profess her willingness to go before all the magistrates in London and Littlebath, and swear that her cousin was no lion and that she was no lamb. At that moment her feelings towards the Christians and Christian Examiners of Littlebath were not the feelings of a Griselda. I think she could have spoken her mind freely had Mr Maguire come in her way. Then, when she saw Mrs Buggins’s copy, her anger blazed up afresh, and her agony became more intense. The horrid man must have sent copies all over the world, or he would never have thought of sending a copy to Mrs Buggins!