was young."

"Except your big old Bible, granfer," put in Bessy.

"That was give me by our old parson when me and your granny was married.
Ay, he did catechise we in church when we was children, but we never
got nothing for it."

"Only the knowing it, father, and that you have sent on to us," put in
the widow.

"Ay, and _that's_ the thing!" said the old man, very gravely.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

AGAINST THE GRAIN.

"And shall the heirs of sinful blood
Find joy unmixed in charity?"
_Keble_.

These first beginnings were really hard work, and there was a great
amount of unpopularity to be encountered, for the people of Uphill were
so utterly unused to kindness that they could not believe that anything
was done for them from disinterested motives. Captain Carbonel took
great trouble to set up a coal club, persuading the President of Saint
Cyril's and the neighbouring landowners to subscribe, and the farmers to
fetch the coal on the plea that to have fuel on low terms would save the
woods and hedges from destruction. Tirzah especially, and half-a-dozen
women besides were to be met with great faggots of limbs of trees on
their backs from Mr Selby's woods, and the keepers were held to wink at
it, for, in truth, the want of fuel was terrible. Mr Selby talked of
withholding his yearly contribution of blankets, because the people were
so ungrateful. "As if it would do them any good to make them colder,"
cried Dora.

So at last it was arranged that one of the barns should be filled with
coal, and Captain Carbonel and Mr Harford, with old Pucklechurch, were
to see it served out at sixpence a bushel every Monday morning. And
then, Pucklechurch reported that the people said, "Depend on it, the
captain made a good thing of it." So, when he divided one of his fields
into allotment gardens, for those who had portions too scanty for the
growth of their potatoes, though he let them off at a rate which brought
in rent below the price of land in the parish, the men were ready enough
to hire them, but they followed Dan Hewlett's lead in believing that
"that Gobbleall knowed what he was about, and made a good thing of it";
while the farmers, like Mr Goodenough, were much displeased, declaring
that the allotments would only serve as an excuse for pilfering. Truly,
whatever good was attempted in Uphill, had to be done against the
stream, for nobody seemed to be on the side of the Carbonels except Mr
Harford, and a few