ine, if at our place the
puddlers wanted to do the work of the shinglers, and the shinglers
wanted to do the work of the rollers, and the rollers wanted to do the
work of the masters, the Osierfield wouldn't be for long the biggest
ironworks in Mershire. Not it! You have to use your common sense in
religion as in everything else."

"You think that religion is the only thing to make people contented and
happy? So do I; but I don't think that the religion to do this
effectually is Christianity."

"No more do I, sir; that's where you make a mistake, begging your
pardon; you go confusing principles with persons. It isn't my love for
my wife that lights the fire and cooks the dinner and makes my little
home like heaven to me--it's my wife herself; it wasn't my children's
faith in their daddy that fed 'em and clothed 'em when they were too
little to work for themselves--it was me myself; and it isn't the
religion of Christ that keeps us straight in this world and makes us
ready for the next--it is Christ Himself."

Thus the rich man and the poor man talked together, moving along
parallel lines, neither understanding, and each looking down upon the
other--Alan with the scornful pity of the scholar who has delved in the
dust of dreary negatives which generations of doubters have gradually
heaped up; and Caleb with the pitiful scorn of one who has been into the
sanctuary of God, and so learned to understand the end of these men.

Late that night, when all the merrymakers had gone to their homes,
Tremaine sat smoking in the moonlight on the terrace of the Moat House.

"It is strange," he said to himself, "what a hold the Christian myth has
taken upon the minds of the English people, and especially of the
working classes. I can see how its pathos might appeal to those whose
health was spoiled and whose physique was stunted by poverty and misery;
but it puzzles me to find a magnificent giant such as Bateson, a man too
strong to have nerves and too healthy to have delusions, as thoroughly
imbued with its traditions as any one. I fail to understand the secret
of its power."

At that very moment Caleb was closing the day, as was his custom, with
family prayer, and his prayer ran thus--

"We beseech Thee, O Lord, look kindly upon the stranger who has this day
shown such favour unto Thy servants; pay back all that he has given us
sevenfold into his bosom. He is very young, Lord, and very ignorant and
very foolish; his eyes are h