l, I am free to confess that although
he enjoyed it all, Kettle was not at his happiest when he was attending
his crops or his sheep, or haggling with his fellow farmers on Mondays
over fat beasts in Skipton market.

He had gone back to one of his more practiced tastes--if one calls it a
taste--the cultivation of religion. The farm stood bleak and lonely on
the slope of a hillside, and on both flanks of the dale were other
lonely farms as far as the eye could see. There was no village. The
nearest place of worship was four miles away, and that was merely a
church. But in the valley beside the Wharfe was a small gray stone
chapel, reared during some bygone day for the devotions of some
forgotten sect. Kettle got this into his control.

He was by no means a rich man. The row of houses in Birkenhead were for
the most part tenanted by the wives of mercantile marine engineers and
officers, who were chronically laggard with their rent, and whom _esprit
de corps_ forbade him to press; and so, what with this deficit, and
repairs and taxes, and one thing and another, it was rarely that half
the projected L500 a year found its way into his banking account. But a
tithe of whatever accrued to him was scrupulously set aside for the
maintenance of the chapel.

He imported there the grim, narrow creed he had learned in South
Shields, and threw open the door for congregations. He was entirely in
earnest over it all, and vastly serious. Failing another minister, he
himself took the services, and though, on occasion, some other brother
was induced to preach, it was he himself who usually mounted the pulpit
beneath the sounding-board. He purchased an American organ, and sent his
eldest daughter weekly to take lessons in Skipton till she could play
it. And Mrs. Kettle herself led the singing.

Still further, the chapel has its own collection of hymns, specially
written, printed and dedicated to its service. The book is Captain
Kettle's first published effort. Heaven and its author alone know under
what wild circumstances most of those hymns were written.

The chapel started its new span of life with a congregation meagre
enough, but Sunday by Sunday the number grew. They are mostly
Nonconformists in the dales, and when once a man acquires a taste for
dissent, he takes a sad delight in sampling his neighbors' variations of
creed. Some came once and were not seen again. Others came and returned.
They felt that this was the loneliest of