The Love That Prevailed — Reading Companion

it to be too large a question to be answered by the miller singlehanded, he, as it were, swept the whole company by a glance into his interrogation.

The water-finder made a motion with his hands as if trying to smooth away an imaginary roughness in the air. There was a general feeling that the carrier had triumphed in his argument. He was one of those people who, by speaking in an air of triumph, succeed in making some people believe that they have triumphed. The farmer shook his head with the disinterestedness of an arbitrator. The smith continued looking into the empty mug from which he had just drunk. The silence lasted several seconds, and every second of course added to the triumph of the carrier. The man was not, however, adroit enough to perceive this. He was indiscreet enough to break the silence. When his eyes had gone round the company they returned to the miller.

“Answer me that question, man!” he cried, and then everyone knew that he had not triumphed: the last word had not been said.

“I'll answer you when you tell me if you wouldn't bear friendly feelings for a doctor who gives you a sugar plum instead of blooding you when he finds you reasonable well,” said the miller.

“'Tis when a man feels healthiest that he stands most in need of blooding,” said Jake, not very readily and not very eagerly. “And so it is in the health of the soul. 'Let him that thinketh he stand take heed lest he fall.' Friends, is there one among us that can lay his hand on his heart and say that he believes that our parsons do their duty honestly and scripturally.”

“It took you a deal o' time to lead us up to that point: you'd best ha' blurted it out at once,” remarked Hal Holmes.

“Nay, we all knew that it was a-coming,” said the farmer. “Since Jake found himself as far away from home as Bristol city, he has never lost a chance of a dig at the parsons.”

“I don't deny that my eyes were opened for the first time at Bristol,” said Jake. “Bristol was my Damascus, farmer.”

The farmer gave a jerk to his head, for the carrier had laid undue emphasis upon the first syllable of the name.

“So bad as that?” he whispered.

The blacksmith laughed.

“Not so bad, farmer,” he said. “'Tis only our neighbour Jake that compares himself with St. Paul, the Apostle.”

“I heard the profanity. He would ha' done better to abide at home,” said the farmer severely.

The blacksmith laughed again.

“There fell, as it were, scales from my eyes when I heard preaching for the first time--when I heard a parson for the first time,” resumed the carrier, looking out of a window, and apparently unconscious of any of the remarks of his friends. “Ay, 'twas for the first time, albeit I had scarce missed church for a whole Sunday since I were a lad. That was what struck me most, neighbours--that I could go Sunday after Sunday, in good black cloth, too, and hear the holy service read, in a sort of way, and the sacred psalms sung, while the fiddle and the double bass and the viol made sweet music, and yet have no real and true yearning after the truth, seems little short of a miracle, doesn't it?”

“Not when one knows that your heart was hard, Jake--ay, sir, it must ha' been harder than steel,” said the blacksmith, shaking his head in mock gravity.

“You scoff, smith, you scoff, I know; but you speak the truth unwittingly,” said the carrier with some sadness. “My heart was like the nether millstone--your pardon, miller, I meant not to say a word that would cast a slight upon your calling: 'tis right for your nether millstone to be hard.”

“The harder the better, and no offence, neighbour,” said the miller generously.