A MAN OF THE MOORS

A

MAN OF THE MOORS

BY

HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE

AUTHOR OF
"THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT," "A TRAGEDY IN GREY," ETC.

LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., Lt^d.
PATERNOSTER HOUSE, CHARING CROSS ROAD
1897

(The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.)

CONTENTS.

A MAN OF THE MOORS.

CHAPTER I. THE MOOR MAN COMES BACK TO HIS OWN.

Joe Strangeways the husband was called; and if roughness could make any man a diamond, then he was emphatically of the purest water. But, apart from his roughness, the untrained eye could detect few good qualities in him; his wife had searched, with tears and prayer, for any redeeming point in his character, and now, at the end of five years, she found herself further than ever from the goal. A harsh man he was, indifferent when not jealous, callous when not actively cruel: his speech was coarse, his voice harsh and raucous, and he was in a perpetual state of growing a beard—a thick, black scrub, as rough as his uncouth tongue. Once a week he got very drunk, and his wife, before she learned to know the signs of the times and to prepare herself accordingly, was apt to suffer physical discomfort.

Kate Strangeways, the wife, was in all things the opposite of her husband: strong, while he was blustering; sensitive, while he was callous; careful of speech and of her personal appearance, while he cared not a pipeful of shag for these things. She was of the fine moor breed, and she had grown up under the eye of the great God who dwells between the hill-summits and the clouds. Why she had married Joe Strangeways, it would have been hard to say; his position as master-quarryman of the works at the edge of the moor was not one to tempt the recognized belle of a country that knew how to rear fine women; his manners did not atone in any way for deficiencies of appearance; her own folk were opposed to the marriage. Perhaps it was just because he had everything against him that the woman in her drove her into his arms.

If you leave the village of Marshcotes behind you, and strike straight across the moor, at the end of three miles or so you will see a biggish house frowning down on you from the top of the ridge which divides the counties of Yorkshire and Lancashire. It had been a roystering spot once on a time, this Peewit House, when a race of sturdy moor squireens held it; but the old breed had died out, and people were not eager, even in those days, to cross three miles of heath in search of a dwelling. Joe Strangeways had obtained a long lease of the place at a nominal rental; he liked to think his wife had no neighbours, for his cur-bred kind of jealousy resented the thought that she was able to hold converse with her fellows while he was away at the quarries.

The tale of Kate Strangeways' life might have run so to the end, had it not been for a certain charitable old lady who lived in the Manor House at the end of Marshcotes village. Mrs. Lomax had the reputation of being mad; but, so long as her madness took the form of distributing money, wine, and food broadcast through the district, no one resented it. She certainly was eccentric, this gaunt old lady: she made a practice of walking at least ten miles every day of her life, winter and summer alike, and the habit had reduced her to an extraordinary leanness of person; her clothes were always too large for her, and her voice was harsh as a man's, through constant exposure to wind and rain. But she was a lady, and a soft-hearted one to boot, despite her gauntness and her shabbiness; and her one consuming pride lay in the fact that the Lomaxes had held the Manor since Marshcotes was a village, a matter of some five hundred odd years.

Kate Strangeways fell ill one spring, and Mrs. Lomax chanced to drop in during one of her lengthy walks.

"H'm," observed the old lady, as she rose to take her leave, "you want fattening. Good red port is the thing for you, and I shall bring you some to-morrow."

"Oh, there is nothing the matter with me!" protested the sick woman. "I won't think of your troubling."

"Now, my dear, you are falling a victim to pride, which is a bane. I have had my own way for sixty-three years, and I shall not submit to dictation from a child of twenty-five. You will see me again to-morrow."

Strangeways looked black when he heard of the visit; he had no pride in the matter of accepting good red port—he was, in fact, already drinking it in anticipation—but it was a shock to him to learn that Mrs. Lomax and his wife had seen as much of each other in the past as Kate admitted, in a thoughtless moment, to have been the case.

"Keep thyseln to thyseln, and let other fowk do th' same!" he growled, betaking himself to the kitchen sink for a wash.

Hannah, the maid-of-all-work, was washing a dishcloth when Strangeways entered; she was no friend of Kate's, because they both happened to be women with wills of their own, and she never wearied of insinuating spokes into her mistress's wheel.

"There's a sight o' fuss an' clatter, to my thinking, when some fowks is poorly," she said, settling her square jaw into firmer lines. "Th' missus, just becos she feels a bit out o' sorts, like, gets a notion that she's going to dee: she mun hev this, an' she mun hev that, an' Mrs. Lummax, th' girt gawk, comes an' fal-lals her to th' top on her bent, till there's no doing nowt wi' her nohow. Gie me a man to live wi', says I, what doesn't sicken becos his little finger hes a pimple on't."

"Hod thy din, woman, an' let me wash myseln!" muttered Joe, thrusting her aside, and taking his place at the sink. Hannah's little speech, however, had had its effect, and Strangeways already found himself doubly aggrieved at the intrusion of Mrs. Lomax into his home. "There'll no good come on it," he said, as he buried his brawny arms in the soapsuds: "what does she, a lady born, want to mak free an' easy wi' my wife for? Comes here for a cup o' tea now an' then, does she, when she gets tired o' trapesing about th' moor? Well, I'll be heving summat to say to that i' a while."

Mrs. Lomax, however, true to her word, brought a basket of good things to Peewit House on the following morning; and the sight of two cobwebby bottles did much to put Strangeways in a better humour, when he came home at the end of the day's work. After the tea-things had been removed, he settled himself in the ingle nook, lit his pipe, and took one of the bottles in his hand.

"Tha needs summat sustaining, lass," he observed, knocking the bottle-neck against the mantel-shelf; "an' happen I'll join thee, for fear tha should feel lonely, like."

"You're not to drink it, Joe; it was only meant just for a glass now and then, and I won't have Mrs. Lomax put on."

"Oh, tha willun't, willun't tha? We'll see about that," retorted Joe, with grim levity.

He reached down a pewter mug from the wall, filled it to the brim, and took a long gulp: then he passed it across to his wife, but she refused to touch it. As the evening wore on, Joe grew mellow with the unaccustomed vintage; he opened the second bottle, and Kate, having exhausted entreaty and abuse alike, left him in disgust. She locked the bedroom door, as her custom was at such times, and left her husband to pass the night as best he could.

A few days later Mrs. Lomax dropped in again.

"Now, my dear, are you feeling any better for the wine?" she asked, in a voice that was more suited to a battle-field than to an invalid's room. "You're not looking one scrap better, at any rate. Come, have you obeyed my orders?"

Kate flushed.

"I—I don't care to drink it," she stammered.

Mrs. Lomax glanced sharply at her; she had some acquaintance with Joe Strangeways' habits, and she read the situation aright.

"You must. Bring out a bottle this moment, and I shall watch you drink two glasses at the least."

Again the younger woman flushed, then grew pale with shame; she could answer nothing, with those two hawk-like eyes looking through and through her. The old lady's lips took to themselves a grim smile.

"About what time does your husband return from his work?" she demanded.

"He leaves the quarries at the half after five—but—you wouldn't be thinking of saying anything, Mrs. Lomax?"

"That is just what I am thinking of, my dear; it is five o'clock now, and I have not walked as much as I should like to-day. I will go towards the quarries and give your husband a straightforward piece of my mind. No, you need offer no excuses for him; when I make up my mind to a thing, I make it up, and there is an end of it." And with this the old lady marched out at the door, her back stiffened, her right hand flourishing the belligerent-looking stick which was her inseparable companion.

Strangeways, crossing the dip in the moor this side the quarries, was aware of a bony figure, three inches his master in point of height, standing across his path.

"Joe Strangeways, I want a word with you."

Joe thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and tried to assume an air of ease; but he did not feel at home with the situation.

"Well, here I stand, my masterful lady; I'm hearkening."

"You have a wife who is a hundred times too good for you; she falls ill through no cause whatever but your treatment of her, and then—you drink the wine which I brought to strengthen her."

"It's a lie!" cried Joe, his face blackening.

"Is it a lie, Joe Strangeways?" said the old lady, that merciless eye of hers driving his own under shelter.

There was a pause; then, "Who telled ye?" he blurted out. "War it Kate?"

"No, it was not Kate. You think me mad, you people hereabouts—oh yes, I know all about it—but, let me tell you, I can see as far as my neighbours into the heart of a stone wall. I am not a fool, my man, and I guessed well enough what would happen if a drunkard and a bottle came together."

Joe's face grew blacker than ever. He half removed one hairy fist from his pocket.

"An' who are ye, I'd like to know, to come telling a man he's a drunkard?"

Mrs. Lomax straightened herself and grasped her stick by the middle.

"I am a woman who can support her own opinions. Joe Strangeways, I'm in two minds whether to give you a sound thrashing or not."

Strangeways became limp. His mind was not quick of movement, and this reversal of a natural law dazed his perceptions; the gaunt figure seemed to tower above him in a way that was uncanny—even terrifying.

"I will let you go this time, for your wife's sake," went on the old lady, with grim pleasantry. "I will give you another chance; but, mark my words—if you touch the next bottle of port I bring, you will have to account to me for it."

Away she strode through the heather with that, and left the man agape with wonder.

"Begow," he muttered, "she's a limb of the devil, yon, an' proper." By the time he gained Peewit House he had realized fully that he had been beaten by a woman, and a consuming hatred took him by the throat. "I'll be even wi' her yet—by God, I will!" he cried, as he stamped into the kitchen. But he left all succeeding bottles of port severely alone.

Kate Strangeways got a little better when the summer came; but it was utter loss of heart from which she was suffering, and there are few cures for that complaint. Joe had been gentler in his treatment of her since the interview with Mrs. Lomax, for the old lady was in and out of the house a great deal, and a superstitious awe of her was gaining on Strangeways; the more he thought of her appearance on that memorable evening, the more was he disposed to accredit her with Satanic powers—and Joe, for all his bluster, was sorely afraid of the devil.

They were cutting the aftermath in the upland meadows, and the heather was losing its purple, when Mrs. Lomax's son came home to Marshcotes. Griff Lomax had made his way in the world by this time, as the hill-men are bound to do, once they can persuade themselves to seek the valleys. He had painted a score of pictures that had brought him popularity, and two which had earned him something more: kindly elders, whose opinions had not hardened into the grooves of their own little techniques, said great things of his future, and regarded even present performances with an instinctive laying-by of critical acumen; devoted youngsters, who kicked at the graver and loved the lighter paintings, urged him to bid for the Academy and creep into the easy-chairs reserved for Society pets. And these same easy-chairs had shown an alluring softness for awhile. After the rough-and-tumble fellowship of moor gales, there was a plausible imitation of comfort to Griff in the tinkle of dainty tea-cups, the scent of delicate draperies, the mincing mock-profundity of clever young men and women who pelted their deepest passions with the mud of paradoxical phrasing.

It was ten years now since he had set off for London, with a portfolio of crude moor sketches in his bag, and in his heart a measureless yearning to conquer something. What the something was, he neither knew nor cared to realize; perhaps he would win fame, perhaps love, or the gold that spelt "power"—but, whatever direction his more settled desires might take, he meant to conquer. The glare of the city-bound life, the eager running to and fro in a laden atmosphere, the desperate, thin-lipped eagerness to shut down a trap-door on all that made for dignity, or purpose, or enthusiasm—these things had dazzled him for awhile; he had learned the strange tongue with a quickness native to him, and he told himself from time to time that the wider life had opened before him.

But deep under all this there was a still, small voice that would insist on a hearing now and then; it was a voice more powerful than conscience—the voice of an instinct—and it cursed him for a fool when he babbled of the wider life. For five hundred years the Lomaxes, generation after generation, had grown to manhood with the taste of the peat in their mouths, and the quickening heath-winds in their vein; his London folly was the folly of those who build their houses on the lava of a sleeping volcano, and think themselves secure. It was this underlying sense of honesty that roused Lomax, from time to time, to endeavours which were worthy of him; that made him expose rough edges, sudden elemental passions, to the startled gaze of the friends who thought they knew him.

There was a little hothouse woman, named Sybil Ogilvie, who had chained him with silk, and who enjoyed what was to her merely a prudent flirtation with the tremulous zest of one who is teaching a half-tamed bear to dance. To Lomax the affair was not a flirtation—and, if it were not love, it hurt him just as much as if it had been. Mrs. Ogilvie had a talent for drawing out all that was paltry in a man, and a genius for making him believe that she had touched his strongest passions.

But the end had come at last. Griff Lomax began to be restless under his yoke, contemptuous of the butterfly canvases that won him flattery. The still, small voice of the moor grew louder; he yearned for the wide-eyed hill-spaces, where the heather was free to stretch away and away till it gained the far sky-line; the streets, the houses, the hurry and empty bustle of chattering crowds, grew nauseous. He had dwelt among the flesh-pots and loved them for a space, and had learned, once for all, the sorry wisdom they had at command. He saw at last—what his friends had seen from the first—that his passion for Sybil Ogilvie was a pitiful chase after moonbeams. Without a word of good-bye to her, he packed up his things and set off for the North, and every swing of the coach set his heart beating faster, because it carried him nearer home.

People had wondered at those two moor pictures of his, which had shown him capable of depth. They could not understand that indefinable something about them which set people's veins tingling as if they had been out in a gale from the fresh north-west. The painter knew, though, what that "something" was; he had come to the heath that had mothered him for more of it. And here he was, home again at the old Manor House, aglow with the deep under-love of his own moor folk and his old moor life.

He rushed into the Manor hall like a whirlwind, and took that gaunt five-foot-ten of motherhood into his arms, and made just as much of her as his heart prompted.

"Yes, Griff, you will do; you will do very well. I am proud of you," said Mrs. Lomax, standing away from him, and revelling in the sight of a son who found it necessary to stoop to the level of her lips.

"And I am proud of you, mother—proud, too, of the moors that reared us both. You can't tell how lifted I felt as I came up the rickety main street, with the old Black Bull at the top. Mother, what fools people are! They wonder where I get my inspiration, and they would never believe if I told them."

"It doesn't signify, Griff; you and I know, don't we? Now, how long are you going to give me? I don't mean to let you go under a month."

"I want to winter here, if you will let me; a whole year I have been away, and now I am to have a spell of home."

"Thank you for that word home, dear. You are sound at the core, I think, Griff."

"But rotten in the rind, eh, mother? It sounds rather as if you meant that."

Again the old lady surveyed him critically. "No, you are moor-oak from bark to heart—in spite of the feeble women you have been painting lately. I wish your father were alive to see you, Griff."

"You'll turn my head, foolish mother. Give me something to eat, instead of naming me in the same breath with father; it is a long stride to that."

He followed her into the kitchen, with its polished dish-covers on the wall, its sand on the floor, its glorious old fireplace, big enough for ten ordinary fires. He teased Rebecca, the cook, into mock indignation, as he had done time and again in years gone by. He tickled the tail of the tom-cat that lay dozing on the hearth, and laughed like a boy when the grizzled old fellow awoke and spat at him.

"Now, Becky, I want a really square meal—a downright, Yorkshire meal," he cried. "You have a remarkably fine ham there; down with it, and cut me some slices. As many eggs as you like. Oat-cake, too—yes, I must have oat-cake and cheese to finish with. Phew, mother, it's good to be back!"

When the meal was over, and Griff had smoked a couple of pipes in the ingle-nook; when the mother and he had fired off questions and answers at each other, and had taken joy of their being together once more, Griff rose and bent over the old lady.

"May I go out and have a chat with the moors? I won't be long away," he laughed.

"Of course, Griff. I have no say in the matter, really, have I?" responded the mother, with a lover-like affectation of pique.

"In that case I won't go."

"Nonsense, boy! Off with you, and don't stay longer than you can help. Will I come with you? Certainly not! You want to have your chat in private; two's company, and I shall have my revenge when you return. Away with you!"

Yes, Griff did want his talk with the moor to be a private one. As he crossed the churchyard, and followed the path through a couple of pasture fields, and up the narrow lane that led to the first of the heather, he was full of anxious eagerness. Would the old holy places be holy still? Would that changeless, everlasting sweep of brown and grey speak to his heart as it once had done? He had been blind; he had roved among lighter allegiances—how if the moor were sick of his inconstancy, and would stretch out no hand of fellowship?

But all that passed. The heath admits few to its friendship, but it never falters in its choice.

As Griff swung over the rise, past the rubble heaps thrown out by the quarries; as he saw the well-remembered undulations of heather and marsh-land and peat, he knew that he was taken home again. The old swift thrill ran through him: strength restrained, pathos that scorned to voice itself, roughness that hid a mighty, yearning tenderness—he understood it all, felt it all, as he had done in the days of his freedom.

No words can touch this feeling a moor man has for his country; it is a religion he never seeks to express—a vitality that helps him to do his work in the world.

Up against the furthest sky-line, showing gallows-black athwart the sunset, stood the threefold timbers of a rotting crane, dismantled long ago when the quarry ceased working. Perhaps no other details of the landscape seem more to express the whole than these gaunt creatures of wood: wherever a Marshcotes man sets eye on a quarry-crane climbing into the sky, he thinks of the Marshcotes moor and the soughing of wind through the heather.

A fat old grouse got up as Lomax approached, and winged its way towards the sunset. Griff, wondering if he had forgotten his ancient cunning, dropped into a clump of crowberry bushes and imitated the call of the hen. Soon a second cock grouse came whirring across the moor—but towards him this time, not away from him—and responded in a hoarse bass. Griff tried his voice at all the signals—warning and invitation, desperate love and the preliminaries of a mere flirtation; and the cock bird was taken in by them all.

Griff laughed, in a round, wholesome way, as he rose to his feet again. It was only the London life that had passed away. He stood for a long while gazing into the wonderful sunset flames: from south to north the sweep of colour stretched itself, and a little north of west the half of a ruddy sun was taking its farewell of the heath. He watched till the red sun-rim had altogether gone, till the orange had faded to yellow, and the yellow to grey; till the dips in the moor plateau were filled with a mystical gloom which seemed to well upward from the peat, rather than downward from the sky; till the rotting crane, that stood on the verge of the under-world, grew ghostlike and dim as the twilight deepened to the hue of its own black timbers.

And still the old love was the new. Still the moor reached out a lover's arms to Griff, and held him close to her breast. He was a moor man again.

CHAPTER II. THE PERVERSION OF GABRIEL HIRST.

A mile and a half due west of Marshcotes, on the highroad that takes you straight to the Lancashire border, lies another village—little more than an overgrown hamlet it is—which is just as compact as its neighbour is straggling. Marshcotes runs down one hill and up another, branching off into queer little streets on the way: but Ling Crag stands square to the moor-top winds, and gets a sight of the sun long after the shelter-seeking Marshcotes houses are greying with twilight.

To this day they are a people to themselves, the villagers of Ling Crag, and, though you come but a league's distance from their boundaries, they account you a foreigner. Slow to speak well of a neighbour, and quick to help him in need; keen as can be when a bargain is toward; more respectful to their conceptions of tangible, everyday duty than to class distinctions; assured, beyond reach of doubt or argument, that their village is the hub of the universe—of such sort are the people of Ling Crag.

A generation or two ago, however, they were a rougher folk than now, leading rougher lives. A soul-searching, hell-fearing Methodism was the dominant note of their existence; and Methodism has ever since been a vital force with them, though it has changed with the change it has wrought in the people. With their rugged strength, their fearlessness of purpose, it was only natural that religion, when first it came into the midst of their wild, strenuous lives, should fit itself in a measure to the soil. They were harsh by example of the winds and the storms that had reared them, generation after generation, and the religion that sought to teach them must also be harsh in its precepts. So their preachers went in and out, and spoke the language of the folk they had to deal with, and led them, little by little, into the quieter places of charity and long-suffering. But Ling Crag was young to religion then, and fear was the larger part of their faith. They were much addicted to superstition, too, these upland folk; and when they sinned, they sinned with groanings of the spirit and retrospective shakings of the head at the old Adam who was responsible for it all.

There is one biggish house in Ling Crag, planted down shoulder to shoulder with its cottage neighbours. It stands on the right hand of the road as you come from Marshcotes; the strip of front garden, with its boundary wall, round-topped and sombre, gives it an air that narrowly escapes haughtiness by contrast with the other dwellings in the hamlet. The Hirsts had lived here almost as long as the Lomaxes had held Marshcotes Manor. They were roysterers once, and the family fortunes were like to evaporate in cards and drink and horseflesh, when old Tom Hirst, luckily for his only son, "took religion"—took it whole-heartedly: he pondered hourly upon his latter end, and fell to crying loud "Amens" in Ebenezer Chapel whenever a gathering was toward, and laboured hard to bring up Gabriel, the child of his old age, in the way of godliness. Gabriel was born just when the reformation heat was strongest, and old Hirst, in the choice of his son's name, thought to hall-mark him for life with the brand of piety. At ten the boy had already learned to believe himself singled out by the Almighty, with peculiar care, for the receipt of punishment; had learnt to pray against the lusts of the flesh; had learnt to feel himself the loathliest and most persistent sinner of all God's creatures. As he grew up, he trained himself more and more to pit his gaining strength against the devil, and wrestled mightily by night and day.

Old Tom died, and his wife followed him a twelvemonth after; and Gabriel, each time that he stood by the grave-side in the wind-swept burial-ground, longed to bury his own flesh also out of sight; the worms of earth, it seemed to him, were gentler than that other Worm that dieth not, and longer life meant but a longer space in which to sin. But Heaven shut its ears to his prayers, and would not give him that coveted six-by-three of rest. He walked in perpetual fear—a fear that sometimes wrung the sweat from his body—and could lay his hands to nothing; he could only stride restlessly across the sheep-tracks of the moor, or ride like a madman along the naked upland highways. He avoided chapel and the society of his fellows, feeling himself a leper among clean men; he was like to go mad from isolation and self-commune.

It was then that the Wesleyan minister at Marshcotes got hold of him, and drew him a comforting picture of the joys of being saved. He went to a Revival; he heard men and women all about him crying on God that they were saved—others groaning in the throes of their final wrestling-bout with the Adversary—others again laughing with hysterical delight. His soul kindled to the spiritual fire. He felt himself lifted on mighty pinions; the sound of swinging chants of praise was in his ears, the swirl of countless rushing angels fanned his cheeks. He closed his eyes, and a great sob broke from him. He was saved.

From that day onward he began to preach; his long experience of such sort of fight lent him substance for his sermons, and his inborn strenuousness of character made an orator of him. He did not join the regular ministry, but became established as a local preacher. His fame, little by little, grew big among the congregations of such chapels as lay on the line of his quarterly circuit, till in time "Gabriel Hirst" grew to be a name to conjure with. All Marshcotes and Cranshaw, every scattered hamlet for miles around, knew Gabriel "by sight and by speech," and the Ling Crag folk were mightily proud of their preacher. Things have altered with Methodism since then, but in those days it was a matter of course that Gabriel should have a special band of admirers who would go as far even as Ludworth to hear him preach on a Sunday morning. So devoted, indeed, was the preacher's "following," that it was much as if he had a regular congregation of his own; whether he held forth in Ling Crag or Marshcotes, Ludworth or Cranshaw, always the same knot of familiars grouped themselves round the chapel doors after service, and estimated to a nicety the amount of Gabriel's recent inspiration. Indeed, when the fire of certain newly-roused passions began to drive him into the wilderness, the change might be gauged with tolerable accuracy by listening to such comments on his sermons.

If a young man were reluctant to amend his ways, or a maiden showed herself over-flighty, Gabriel Hirst's sermons were the infallible remedy. He could invoke the thunders of God, and paint hell-fire, with greater vigour than any of his fellows, and even the most careless of sinners quailed before his description of the judgment in store for them. Perhaps the maidens of Ling Crag were less satisfied with the preacher than his piety warranted. He was well off, "straight set up," and had good looks of a rugged kind. Had he asked one of them to marry him, she would probably have given favourable consideration to the proposal. But Gabriel scarcely seemed to understand that they were women. They might don their best hats and infuse rough coquetry into their glances, but he was not aware of it; they were just fellow-sufferers with himself in a world whose keynote was original sin, and they gained interest in his eyes only through the effort that was necessary to keep them in the right path.

Yet, underneath it all, Gabriel Hirst had the faults and the virtues of his own folk developed to their furthest extremes. The old moor blood, pagan to its last drop, was quick in his veins. Reared to the conviction that he had a "call," he strove night and day to keep the spirit working within him, strove to deaden the voice of the moor wind at his ear and the cry of remoter fathers in his heart. He was a strong man, and a passionate man, and for the five years since his first sermon he had, with an energy almost savage, forced his strength into the service of his religion.

For the rest, Gabriel was a gentleman farmer, who delegated most of his work in this direction to one Jose Binns, a godly, lean-flanked man, who was wont to class Betty his wife, the master, and the uncertainty of hay-crops, all as dire responsibilities sent to him by the Lord as a punishment for his overwhelming sinfulness. Yet Jose managed the farm excellently, and was a rare hand at "selling or swopping a beäst."

Griff Lomax and the preacher had run about the countryside together as boys, and many a time of late, when Lomax came home to the Manor for his brief spells of holiday, Gabriel had striven to save him as a brand from the burning. London, the devil, and an artistic life were synonymous to Gabriel Hirst, and it was torture to him to think that the friend of his boyhood was going the way of perdition. He loved Griff, now that they had left boyhood well behind, with a certain wild adoration which no effort could stifle; and, just as he prayed his hardest and painted hell in its most vivid colours when the yearning for freedom was strongest upon him, so he would avoid Lomax for a week at a time, would refuse to walk across to Marshcotes in search of him until he was persuaded that he had a genuine call to attempt conversion once again.

On the Friday after Griff's return for the winter, the preacher caught sight of him at a bend of the road that ran from Marshcotes to Ling Crag. He hastily slipped under shelter of a barn and let him pass. He dared not go out to meet him, because the desire was too strong upon him; but when he reached home, and learned from Betty Binns, his housekeeper, that Griff had been in search of him, he sorrowed over the meeting which he had lost of his own free will. Then he dined off tea and dry bread, lest the Adversary should turn stronger food to his own ends, and set off in the rain, and walked the moors for six hours. When he returned, his Sunday morning's sermon was prepared.

With Sunday the short Michaelmas summer began; the clouds had been squeezed dry of rain, and the morning was clear and fresh. Gabriel was down on the circuit plan to preach both morning and evening at the Ling Crag Chapel.

He preached for fifty minutes in the morning—preached himself into a frenzy—thundered and bellowed and cried from the little pulpit of unpolished deal, until his hearers felt the leaven of damnation working to their finger-tips.

"Eh, but it war grand, grand!" passed from mouth to mouth, as the congregation gathered round the door after service.

The softer sort of Methodists were to be found here and there; but these rarely lifted their voices after service, being quiet men and women who did not care to entangle themselves in argument.

This morning, however, the harsher spirits were not having things all their own way. Old Jose Binns had just had his say about the sermon.

"There's a deal o comfort i' listening to the likes o' yon," he had said, in his tone of grudging praise. "Ye could see by th' face on him 'at t' Sperrit war moving him, an' proper. There's not a mony like Gabriel hereabouts."

"He can preach, can th' lad, an' there's no denying it," spoke up a tall, spare man on the outskirts of the group. "But's he's ower young, to my thinking, to ponder so mich on th' dark side o' this world an' th' next, an' niver gie us a taste o' th' gooid there is about. He mud be softer by th' half, an' niver be th' war for't."

Old Binns screwed up his mouth a shade tighter.

"We're hard folk up here, Ebenezer, an' softness is nowt i' our way."

"Hard folk we be, an' all th' more call there is for a bit o' softness now an' again. If religion warn't gi'en us to soften our hearts, what mak o' use is't, Jose Binns?"

"Ay, ay, tha'rt right there," chimed in another voice. "Ye mark my words, lads. I'm fourscore year an' ower, an' I've seen what I've seen, an' I tell ye, there'll a day come when all this shutting up o' th' gooid side o' human natur—fair as if 'twere summat to be shamed on—'ull pass away for gooid an' all. Ye willun't listen to th' preachers 'at wants to leäd instead o' frightening ye, though we've a mony as 'ud be glad for ye to hear 'em. Ye mun ha' nowt but judgment an' wrath, an' ye willun't bide owt softer. What do Gabriel Hirst know o' th' better side o' things? He's nobbut a kittling yet, as hes niver known th' love of a woman."

"Shame on thee, shame on thee!" growled Jose Binns. "An old man like thee to be talking o' love an' sich-like lightness, when a man o' God has just been telling thee to shun th' sinful flesh an' all its warks. Dost call thyseln a Methodist?"

"Ay, lad; I call myseln a Methodist, an' there's nowt i' th' doctrine what forbids a man to see th' gooid i' hisseln as well as th' bad. Thee bide till th' little pracher hes getten his hand round th' heft of a straight love for a woman—they're th' best that God has gi'en us, is women, when all's said—an' tha'll find his praching summat godlier, like, nor it hes been."

"Women!" said Jose Binns, turning down the corners of his wry old mouth.

"Women's better nor th' men, ony way," put in Mrs. Binns, sharply. "An' what call hast tha, Jose, to go making fooil's faces at thy own wedded wife? I've a mind to dress thy jacket for thee, that I hev."

Old Binns retreated into the background a little; he no longer felt a prophet in his own country. And a laugh went up from the group, and they fell to talking of this and that, in a hushed, Sabbath fashion.

But the preacher saw no one, heard no one. He staggered out of the graveyard and into the road. He turned through an open gate on his left, and crossed some scanty, sheep-shaven pasture land; the half-starved sheep looked blankly at him, and a bare-ribbed cow stared at him in surprise over a neighbouring wall. Gabriel Hirst awoke to reality; he saw the sunlight on the ridges, and the warm shadows in the hollows; he felt the fresh wind on his face; he heard the call of a linnet from a village garden behind him: and one and all were agony to the would-be man of God. He felt himself full of the lusts of the flesh—a vague, idealistic flesh whose boundaries were infinite, whose sinfulness knew no limits; he could not understand the sunshine, save as a light to search out his own evil-doing; and he magnified his worthlessness, because he could remember no tangible sin by which to reduce his wild imaginings to a sober standard.

He went through a gap in the wall which confronted him, and stood looking dreamily down on a little wooded dell, through which a moor stream bubbled its way to the river. On a sudden his body grew rigid, his eyes lost their glow of introspection and fixed themselves on a rounded basin of the stream. A girl was paddling in the water, and was singing a love-ballad, in a rich, south-country voice that contrasted oddly with her northern surroundings.

The preacher pressed one hand close upon his heart, and let his eyes note the slender lines of the girl's figure, fast ripening towards womanhood. She seemed fresh and sweet as the wind and sun and water that played with her. Gabriel Hirst looked at the lassie's face, and his pulses leaped to a new delight. He lost his rigid set of body, and stretched out both arms wide to the moors; this was his apology for past misrepresentations.

Down the steep hillside he went, stumbling into rabbit-holes, pricking his ankles with thistle-needles, falling and picking himself up again. The girl became aware of an intruder: she glanced up the hill, and left the water, and seated herself on a pine-log that lay beside the stream. By the time that Gabriel Hirst had reached the brook and jumped it, her little white feet were safely under cover. He stopped; the inspiration that had led him here was at an end, and he had no knowledge of the things that young men say to maidens.

"Why didn't you turn back when you saw me?" demanded the girl. A red flush, of shame and anger mixed, had risen to her cheeks.

Not a word spoke Gabriel Hirst. His late fervour at the chapel, his lifetime of repression and battling against the vital part of himself, seemed to have been swept clear away; he could do nothing but wonder at this new-found form of Grace.

She laughed, a little, musical, defiant laugh.

"I thought I was safe for a good half-hour yet, Mr. Hirst. You keep them so long at chapel when you preach, and I counted on that. Besides, I was only watching the path up the Dene; no one ever comes the way you came just now."

He winced, and the girl laughed again.

"I—I preached for close on an hour," he said slowly.

"Gracious! I'm glad I was not there. But is it really so late? Time seems to pass so quickly, when one is being a sinner."

"A sinner!" gasped the preacher. It had been so clear, a moment ago, that sin was at an end; and now the old battle-cries were beginning to ring in his ears; they clashed with that rounded, human laugh.

"Did you preach well?" she asked, after a pause. There was irony in her tones.

The preacher passed a hand across his eyes, and shuddered.

"I—thought so—at the time," he murmured.

"Ah, well, I have missed something, then. Some day—when the sunshine is gone—I am coming to hear you. You are in love with Hell, aren't you?"

In that moment Gabriel feared, not for his retreating faith, but for the girl's safety. The years were slow to loosen their hold on him, and he could not see how impiety—childish though it was—could escape the summary vengeance of Heaven. But nothing happened to the girl-woman who was seated on the pine-log, her feet gathered under her skirts; and the preacher breathed more freely. Old habit rushed in, and the words slipped out of his mouth.

"Greta Rotherson," said he, "are you prepared to die? Have you ever thought of eternal flames——"

"Ready to die? Not a bit. I'm much too fond of life."

Gabriel Hirst could find no answer. But he looked at her face, and he knew she could mean no wrong.

"Can I come to see you?" he said abruptly.

"Come to see us? Yes. We are dull in this stupid village of yours, where every one looks on us with suspicion, just because we come from the south. But—Mr. Hirst—you won't mind my saying something?" Her tone was graver now, almost supplicating. "Father doesn't want to be converted, and he won't see you if you insist upon it. Do you understand? Come just as a friend, and talk like—like a man."

Without knowing it, she had protruded one white and coral foot beyond the protecting skirt. Gabriel Hirst saw it, and stood irresolute. Then he cried—a bitter, stifled cry, as of a dumb creature in pain—and raced for his life down the bank. At the end of the wood he ran into the arms of Griff Lomax.

"Hallo, what brings you here? Why, man, you look as if you had seen a ghost!" cried Griff.

The preacher was not so strong as he once had been. Tea and bread, his exclusive diet for days at a time, were beginning to tell on him. The excitement of the sermon, the more violent frenzy that had followed it, the clean pair of heels which he had finally shown to temptation, all had their effect. He was breathless, and the sweat was trickling down his face. His body was shaking as with ague. He leaned heavily against a gate; Griff saw that his eyes looked hunted.

"I've lost my ghosts, Lomax," he said brokenly. "They were what I lived by; my father handed them down to me, and I never thought to let them go. I can't see them any more, Griff—the Spirit coming down with a sweep of wings, and the Avenging Angel with a bloody sword in his hands, and the red hell flames licking at the unclean lips of the evil doers. They're lost—all lost."

He left the gate and began to pace up and down the path. Lomax put a strong arm through his.

"You're talking nonsense, old fellow!" he said quietly.

The preacher grew calmer for a while; the muscular grip on his arm, and the big voice telling him not to be a fool, gave him a childish feeling of security. He let his friend take him up through the wood and out among the moors on the other side; he opened his mouth wide and drank in great gulps of the wind. Then, on a sudden, he remembered the full measure of his sinning, and he shut his mouth with a click, and he groaned in bitterness of spirit.

"Griff," he said gravely, "you don't know what I've done. I came out of the chapel wrestling with the Devil: man, I could hear God rebuking me for my sins one minute and cheering me on to the fight the next. And then—I fell away. I saw a woman's face, and I lost every other thought, and I tumbled down the hillside like a madman."

Lomax gave a low mutter of surprise; he glanced sharply at the other's face, and saw that remorse was cutting deep furrows across the brow and beneath the eyes.

"But that is not the worst," went on the preacher, with desperate calm. "I listened to the woman's voice, talking of Hell as if—as if it was a joke, almost; and I felt no anger. I was only afraid that Heaven would strike her dead, and take her out of my reach. Man, it's fearful, fearful! I tried to rebuke her—when fear for her life had passed—but the words might as well have come out of a tin kettle, for all the heart that went with them. I can't believe any longer, Lomax."

The preacher's agony was so real, and it was all about so trifling a matter from his friend's standpoint, that Griff could have laughed aloud. That a man should have come to Hirst's age, and be frightened by one overmastering impulse of love—surely there was something absurdly askew in it. But he did not laugh: he just tightened his grip of the other's arm, and—

"Gabriel Hirst," said he, "you've been preaching too much and eating too little. You're going to listen to me now, whether you like it or not. I take my painting about as seriously as you take your religion; I eat it, and live it, and breathe it every moment of my life."

The preacher made a faint murmur of protest, but Griff's hand crushed it out of him, still-born.

"Sometimes, old fellow, I paint too much, just as you have been preaching too much; and I lose my faith in art. I go about like a lunatic, and I think perdition has found me at last."

"Perdition has never had far to seek for you, and more's the pity." Gabriel Hirst was beginning to tingle with fight again—which was just what the other wanted.

"Not my perdition; that only comes near when I've been playing the fool with myself. I try not to be a muff at these times, Hirst; I go out, and walk or ride, till I can do nothing but stumble into bed and sleep the clock round. I generally get up healthy."

"You mean—you mean that I'm being a muff?" asked the preacher, in surprise. There was no resentment in his tones.

"Yes; that's just about it. Have you to preach to-night?"

"I have; though God knows I'm not fit to do it."

"Then straight home you come with me. Mother will look to it that you don't feed off skim-milk and a crust of bread. You'll preach to-night, Hirst—better than ever you did in your life."

Again the preacher tried to fight, but he was exhausted; he could only follow the lead of this overmastering pagan. Mrs. Lomax was sitting down to dinner when they came in.

"I had given you up, Griff," she said. "You are never to be depended on when once you get to the moors, and I was too hungry to wait. Gabriel, I am glad to see you; what have you been doing to your face? It looks like an old man's."

"He's been fasting, mother, and overworking himself. I put him in your hands; I don't think you will let him starve, much as he wants to."

"No, I don't think I shall," responded the old lady, grimly.

Gabriel Hirst's father and Griff's father had been close friends; dissimilarity of outlook upon every aspect of life had brought them together, just as it had brought the sons together. On both counts—the son's and the father's—Mrs. Lomax was warmly disposed towards Gabriel.

So he sat down, and ate meekly, as he was bidden, of strong meat and apple-pie and cheese. He drank two glasses of good red port; fain would he have asserted himself on this matter, but Mrs. Lomax reminded him of Timothy, and he was altogether too bewildered to do battle on a point of Scripture.

Greta Rotherson, when the preacher disappeared at the corner of the wood, had laughed a little, and frowned a good deal, and had finally put on her stockings and boots. "I wish he had never come," she cried. "It is such a quiet nook, and no one has disturbed me before. I like Gabriel Hirst, though, for all his hardness and his dangling of hell before poor old father's eyes. Hardness?" She laughed again at that, softly and musically; for she remembered how the preacher had looked at her a few minutes ago. "He only wants taking in hand by—by a woman who isn't afraid; he's not a fool at the bottom of him."

Then she tossed her hair back from her forehead and went briskly up the wooded cleft of the hills, until she reached a weather-stained corn-mill. The great wooden wheel was creaking intermittently on its axle, as if the jar and fret of work-a-day motion were more to its liking than this enforced Sabbath rest. Old Rotherson, the miller, with his iron-grey hair and shrewd, clean-shaven face, was smoking a churchwarden pipe at his door; the bees had deserted the heather once more in favour of his bit of a garden, and a peacock-butterfly was sunning itself on the house wall. It was hard to believe that the Storm-God had his temple so near to this sheltered cranny of the moors.

"Well, Greta, lass, have you paddled to your heart's content?" cried the old man, as his daughter came in sight.

"Yes, father—and a little more. Gabriel Hirst came down the hillside before I had finished, and he would stop to talk. I had to sit on a log with my legs tucked up under me, and I nearly got cramp before I rid myself of him."

The miller chuckled quietly to his churchwarden.

"He'd never have noticed, child, so you might have spared yourself the trouble. Was he as sour as ever?"

Greta turned her head to watch the peacock butterfly on the wall. Her dimpled cheeks grew rosy.

"Not quite, father. He wanted to know if he could come to see us."

"Lass, lass, I wish folks would let a man's soul alone. What did you say?" groaned the miller.

"That we were proof against conversion, and sick of it. That he might come as a friend if he cared to, and we'd give him a hearty welcome."

"Good, good!" muttered the old man, approvingly. "But I doubt him, Greta; he'll never be able to keep his tongue off that subject for long."

"Well, we shall see. There's Nancy, father, coming to tell us that dinner is ready. I'm ready, too; put down your pipe, dear."

When Gabriel Hirst mounted the pulpit of Ebenezer chapel that evening, he felt none of the old red-hot lava of damnation rising to his lips; he was strangely calm, and at peace with this world and the next; the thought of little children was running, like a silver thread, through every working of his mind. Decent food and a couple of glasses of honest wine had much to do with it; re-action after his two wild extremes of the morning counted for a good deal; but more powerful than either had been those two hours he spent at Marshcotes Manor, under the influence of Griff's cheery optimism and Mrs. Lomax's sane, practical grip of things. He was just about to give out his text when there was a clatter of hob-nailed boots on the stone floor, and he saw old Binns, who was caretaker of the little chapel, showing Greta Rotherson into a seat near the pulpit. For one moment his heart leaped into his mouth, and he thought that it would be impossible to get the words out; but he looked at Greta steadily, and his passion of the morning was gone, and he wondered that the girl's presence should seem to round off some hitherto incomplete ideas. As Griff had prophesied, he preached better than he had ever done in his life: there was no wild denunciation, no fever-heat of appeal, as in other sermons; it was all clear, and crisp, and kindly; above all, it was convincing.

Greta Rotherson paused now and then, on her way out of chapel, to hear the scattered comments of the villagers. Some were glad of the glimpse which had been given them of a better life than their daily round of hardness and care afforded. Others did not like their preacher under his new aspect; they had too long been supplied with strong stuff to descend willingly to fare on which only women and children could be expected to thrive.

"Well, I'm saying that Gabriel Hirst is noan th' man he war this morning," said one. "He's like as he's lost all fire; not a word o' warm hell-fire did he gie us, an' that's noan like Gabriel."

"Thee hod thy whisht for a while," broke in another. "He war powerful moved this morning, an' it doan't stan' to reason 'at th' Sperrit will wark i' a man fro' morn to neet. Let him bide; he'll ingather some thunder o' th' Lord afore another week comes round."

"Ay, but summat hes come to Gabriel sin' th' morning," said an old woman, with a dry laugh. "I see'd him forebye th' owd corn-mill after his preaching so fine and large about th' lusts o' t' flesh. Miller Rotherson's daughter—ye marked her i' chapel mebbe, to-neet?—war alongside of him, and he war just gaäping an' gaäping at her doll's face of a woman. Gabriel is noan th' man he war, to my thinking."

"Well, now, I did think this morning, while he war fair agate wi' his praching, an' th' words came out as thick as chaff at threshing-time, I did think he warn't exactly what he hed been. Ay, ay, it's a sad to-do when a man o' God goes speering after a pretty wench. An' her noan Ling Crag born, nawther. Nay, I misdoubt th' lad, i' th' latter end. May the Almighty keep me from women, and pardon all my sins, amen."

"Th' women'll see to that for theirseln, Ephraim; doan't thee put thyseln about," chimed in an irreverent youngster from the rear.

Greta Rotherson had passed out of earshot before the old woman launched her tit-bit of gossip, and she went home with a smile on her face. She was wondering at the change in the preacher—and thinking of that look on his face when first she came out of the water and sat on the pine-log with her little white feet tucked up under her dress.

CHAPTER III. A MOOR WOMAN.

Griff Lomax bethought him, early on Monday morning, that his friend the preacher would be better for a little more of the same treatment to which he had subjected him yesterday. He found Gabriel just coming down the stairs.

"Well, old fellow, how are things with you to-day? You're late down, at any rate, and that means you have slept."

"Ay, like a child," said the preacher, with a half-rueful, half-ashamed air. "Like a child, Griff—and that after I'd sinned grievously against the Lord."

"Confound it, man," laughed Griff, "I wish I could drive it into you that you're a poorer hand at sinning than most of us. Just you tell yourself, Hirst, that the Lord has a pretty handful to look after, and that He can't spare you the exclusive attention you seem to count on: I should be ashamed to expect it, myself."

"Griff, lad, don't make mock; try to soften your heart to the Lord, and His ways will come clear to you."

The preacher's voice was tender. His yesterday's excitement had left him weak, and his heart turned to Lomax with a mixed feeling that the lad was at once a tower of strength and a weak unbeliever.

"I don't mock in my heart, and you know it, Hirst. But I want to kick some of the nonsense out of you, and that's the truth of it. Now, I'm going to watch you eat your breakfast: what is there on the table? Humph! three slices of bread and butter, and tea—the tea is unconscionably weak, too, by the look of it."

"Here—I say, Griff—what are you going to do?" cried Gabriel, as his visitor strode out of the room, and across the stone flags of the hall.

Lomax, however, was in the kitchen by this time. The housekeeper was ironing one of Gabriel's coarse cotton shirts.

"Betty Binns," said the intruder, "do you call yourself a woman of sense?"

Mrs. Binns fairly gasped at that. It was bad enough that young Lomax should march into her kitchen without permission, but that he should forthwith give battle to her in this foolhardy way—"well, it did beät all."

"If so be as I'm not, I'm ower old to learn!" she retorted, waiting till her opponent should give her some sure ground for combat.

Griff, spoiling for one of his old-time fights with the redoubtable Betty, put on just that air of smiling effrontery which most annoyed her.

"A woman is as old as she looks, Mrs. Binns, and there's heaps of time yet for you to learn."

"Tak your fal-lal Lunnon manners to them as wants 'em!" snorted Mrs. Binns, viciously laying to on the wristbands of the shirt, and glaring bellicosely at the intruder. She broke a button during the process—a piece of carelessness which did not tend to soothe her ruffled feelings.

"All right; I'm off in a moment. What I wanted to say to you was just this—a woman of sense would never let her master starve as you do. Gabriel Hirst will die before long, if he goes on with these precious slops you give him, and his death will be at your door."

This was an aspect of the situation which had not occurred to Betty. She was not going to confess as much, though, so she merely growled an invitation to Lomax to go on with what he had to say.

"Just put a pan of water on the fire, and a couple of good fresh eggs in the pan—no, you can put four. I've breakfasted already, but I'll start again by way of example."

"An' who gave ye leave, if I may mak so bold as to axe to come lording it i' my kitchen?"

"No one; but I'm here all the same. You don't know the food a strong man needs, and I've come to teach you."

Betty Binns was in two minds whether she should throw her iron at Griff's head; but she restrained herself, and tried her hand at grim satire instead.

"Th' maister is a man o' God, Mr. Lummax, which tha'll niver be nohow tha tries. It's nobbut likely he should want his vittals different fro' other fowks's."

"The more he's a man of God, the more strength he needs to fight the devil.—Now come, Mrs. Binns, we've had many a set-to in times gone by, and I'll acknowledge you generally have the best of it: won't you do my way this once?"

He was talking sense now, Betty could not but admit. Of course she always had the best of it—it took something more than a mere man to vanquish Betty Binns—and she always had said "there war summat she liked i' th' lad;" and perhaps he was not as far wrong on this occasion as bothersome men-folk generally were.

"Well, happen ye've hit on a bit o' common sense once i' a while. Th' maister, he do look main poorly when th' Sperrit keeps strong meät out on him. Ay, well, well, we'll be seeing."

Lomax chuckled at the overthrow of Betty Binns; he had expected more fight from her. Truth to tell, however, the housekeeper had been sorely bothered of late to see Gabriel growing leaner and leaner; he was a solid, square-built man, as his father had been before him, when Nature had her own way, but his increasing mania for slops was playing havoc with him. So that Betty was really a good deal relieved to find an ally in young Lomax.

"Didn't I say you were a woman of sound sense?" said Griff, with barefaced disregard of his first statement. "You're jolly fond of me, too, Betty, under all that bluster of yours."

Betty raised a rolling-pin from the table, and pursued her tormentor as far as the kitchen door.

"And, Betty, as you love me," he said, by way of a last Parthian shot, "make a couple of rounds of buttered toast. You will, won't you?"

"I'll lay this about your lugs," retorted Betty, brandishing her weapon, "if ye're not off in a brace o' shakes."

Gabriel Hirst was standing by the window when Griff returned.

"Well, what have you been doing?" he demanded.

"Oh, nothing. I felt a bit hungry after the walk from Marshcotes, and I asked Mrs. Binns to boil four eggs."

"I thought you'd had breakfast, or I should have offered it long ago."

"I have had one, but I intend to tackle another. Two eggs for me, two for you; a round of toast each. Your Betty Binns isn't half the sport she was, Gabriel; she gives in like a lamb."

"He's a gooid for naught, is Griff Lummax," muttered Betty, as she cut the bread and held it before the fire; "but there's summat I like about him; ay, I willun't deny 'at he hes a way wi' him."

Gabriel made a last stand when the eggs were set down before him with a clatter.

"You don't know, Griff, how religion takes a man; he wants to be always subduing, subduing, and it's a fearful sin to pamper the carnal body."

"Fiddlesticks! You look after your body, and the Lord will look after your soul; play the fool with your body a year or two longer, and you'll begin to wonder whether you have a soul at all."

"But, Griff—John the Baptist lived on locusts and wild honey, and——"

"You're not John, though, and you happen to have some one to look after you. Chip that egg."

Gabriel obeyed meekly, though he sorely doubted Griff's way of putting things. He ate with a relish, however, and at the end of it Lomax got to the real subject in hand.

"What about this girl? Who is she?" he asked abruptly.

The preacher flushed.

"All last night I was dreaming of her, and that was why I slept so quietly: I forgot that it was the flesh, and we went over the moor together till we got to the Thorntop road. She was more like a spirit than a woman, and her eyes were as quiet and deep and far away as the stars. I whispered, 'Greta,' and she took my head to her breast, and 'Hush!' she said; 'the fight is over and done with, and the reward is here.' Griff, man, it's hard, hard, coming back to the sin."

Griff watched him curiously. The innocence of this broad-shouldered man, his childish outspokenness—he could not tell whether more to pity or admire them.

"Greta? It doesn't sound like one of the names hereabouts. Who is she, Gabriel?"

"Greta Rotherson. She lives at the corn-mill in Hazel Dene."

"What? Is some one running the old mill again? It was standing when I left here last year."

"Yes; Miller Rotherson came from the low country in the spring, saw the mill, and bought it out of hand. You should hit it off, you and he; many's the time I've sought to save his soul alive, but he always has the one answer. 'Give it up, Mr. Hirst,' says he. 'Some men were made to take religion, as your saying is, and some were not; and there's about the end of it. I don't need it, and I couldn't take it if I tried from now till Doomsday.'"

Griff smiled; he recognized a kindred spirit.

"Did you ever try to convert the daughter?" he asked, after a pause.

Again the preacher flushed, and the lines on his face deepened.

"I've been thinking that over, and it seems as though that fit of mine was not a matter of yesterday, nor the day before nor the day before that. It's been coming on a long while, Griff, though I never guessed it till I saw her, winsome as a fairy, paddling in the beck. I did try to convert her, just once; but the words wouldn't come, and when she laughed, with a kind of coo at the tail of her voice, I fell soft and hadn't the heart to upbraid her. Ay, Griff, it's been coming this long while."

"And the best thing that has come to you since you were born," cried Lomax, cheerily. "What with the girl, and enough to eat, and a rap over the knuckles now and then from me—for old times' sake, you know—we'll make a moor man of you yet, Gabriel. Do you ever feel the swish of a gale making you drunk?"

For a moment the preacher yielded to that storm-suggestion; his whole face lit up, his eyes sparkled.

"Yes, drunk. When the heather lies low against the peat, and the rain belches out of the sky—it's almost like freedom at times."

"You'll do," growled Lomax.

The light went out of Gabriel's eyes.

"But it's the old Adam; it has to be beaten under."

"I wish you'd let your old Adam alone a bit, Gabriel. He's not half as bad as some who followed him. Come for a ride to-night; the moon is at full, and Lassie is eating her head off in the stable."

"Yes, I'll come. It's good to have you back again, Griff."

"As good as to be back? I doubt it. I must be off now, anyway, or that mother of mine will be seeking me with a hunting-crop; I promised to take her for a walk this morning. It's a pity about the mill, Gabriel; I used to bathe regularly in the stream, and there is an end of that now; I was coming for a bathe when you ran into me yesterday."

"Shall you be going to see Miller Rotherson?" asked Gabriel, wistfully, as they stood at the gate.

"Of course, old fellow, if only to give him a helping hand; you're a terrible chap when you set your mind on conversion."

"Because if—if you liked me to go with you—I know them, you see."

"Yes, I see," smiled Griff. "All right; I'll call for you on the way."

The preacher's brow was clouded as he went back through the fading stocks and asters that lined the garden path.

"Just the same, just the same," he muttered; "when you're serious, a devil of passion, and when you're gay, a scoffer. But, God knows, lad, how I love you!"

"I'm late, mother," said Griff, rushing into the Manor parlour at his usual hurricane speed. "Old Gabriel has been in a poor sort of way, lately, and I had to bully him. Where are we going to-day?"

"Anywhere you like, Griff. Let us take the first path we come to, and go straight ahead. We won't bind ourselves to anything."

Every day since he returned, the mother and Griff had had a long walk together. The man's zest for the moors was increasing apace; the more heather he got, the more he wanted, and the two of them found so much to talk about, that Kate Strangeways, the quarry-master's wife, went clean out of the old lady's head. Their cross-country tramp this morning, however, chanced to bring them in sight of Peewit House.

"Were you ever in that house up there?" asked Mrs. Lomax.

"Never; but I have often thought of exploring it. Who lives there? Some one must do, as there is smoke coming out of the chimney."

"The worst-assorted couple you can imagine; a husband who ought to be horse-whipped every day of his life, and a wife who is, in my judgment, as fine a woman as I know anywhere. I want to drop in, by the way; Mrs. Strangeways has been ill for a long while, and I stop for a chat now and then. Will you come?"

"Of course I will. I happen to be in search of a type of the genuine moor woman, too, and perhaps she will oblige me."

"Griff, Griff! Always on the hunt for people to dip your brush into. I sometimes wish you were not quite so full of your work."

"It's all right, mother," laughed the other, as he made her take advantage of his arm up the side of the brae; "I try to keep a tight hand on it, and only let it out when it ought to be let out."

But the laugh died on his lips: they were close to the bit of intake that guarded Peewit from the moor, and Kate Strangeways was leaning over the gate. Griff had dreamed of that pure-bred moor woman of his for many a year, and it seemed to him that he had found her at last in the flesh; she had the lissom strength of figure, the lips that were clear-cut for tenderness or scorn, the resolute hazel eyes, all just as he had imagined them.

"Mother, she is beautiful!" he whispered.

The old lady looked hard at him; then laughed, a dry, uncertain laugh.

"Let her be just a type, Griff, dear; don't dwell too much on the flesh and blood."

Once the first shock of surprise was over, Lomax was disposed to laugh at himself touching his half-second of emotion. He warmed to the thought of canvas and palette; he saw fine capabilities in the handling of this moor woman by a man who had the same peat salt in his fibres.

"Well, mother, I have my chance at last," he said, as they came away. "That type is absolutely new in art; I can only pray that I may not spoil her in the drawing."

Her laugh had no uneasiness in it now; she saw that Kate Strangeways, the actual, had very little to do with that swift light of enthusiasm on Griff's face.