nd nothing remarkable in the big, gaunt man with
the Newgate fringe and clean-shaven lips, who looked like a Scot but was
Sussex born and bred. Joe Longstaffe was not intellectual; his theology
was such that even the Salvation Army shook their heads over it; he had
read nothing but the Bible and Wesley's Diary--and those with pain; he
stuttered and stumbled grotesquely in his speech, and a clerical Oxford
don, who pilgrimaged from Pevensey to hear him, remarked that the only
thing he brought away from the meeting was the phrase, reiterated _ad
nauseam_,

"As I was sayin', as you might say."

But there was one mark-worthy point about the congregation of the
chapel; and the Duke in his shrewd way was the first to note it.

"Nine out of ten of the people who attend are his own folk--his carters,
shepherds, milk-maids, and the like. And they don't go for what they can
get. Now if I started a chapel--as I'm thinkin' of doin'--d'you think my
people'd come? Yes; if they thought they'd get the sack if they didn't."

They went, indeed, these humble folk, because they couldn't help it. And
they couldn't help it because there was a man in that chapel who drew
them as surely as the North Pole draws the magnetic needle. And he drew
them because there was Something in him that would not be denied,
Something that called to their tired and thirsting spirits, called and
comforted. It was not possible to say what that Something was; but this
man had it, and it was very rare. And that tall daughter of his, who
rarely smiled, and never grieved, who was always strong, quiet, and
equable, going about her work regular as the seasons, possessed it, too.

Everybody, indeed, respected Patience Longstaffe, if few loved her.

She was long past thirty, and people were beginning to say that she had
dedicated herself to virginity, when to the amazement of all it was
announced that she would marry Mat Woodburn, the trainer, twenty years
her senior.

The Duke, of whose many failings lack of courage was not one, asked her
boldly why she was doing it.

Her answer was as simple as herself.

"He's a good man," she said.

It was a new and somewhat surprising light on the character of Old Mat,
but the Duke accepted it without demur.

"She's right," he said at the club at Lewes. "Mat's a rogue, but he's
not a wrong 'un." And with his unequalled experience of both classes,
the old peer had every right to speak.

The vulgar-minded, who make the ma