bade the parish to lend them the
least help, the old Squire had ceased to interfere.

Mr. Raymond's hair was greyer, and Taffy might have observed--but did
not--how readily towards the close of a day's laborious carpentry he
would drop work and turn to Dindorf's _Poetae Scenici Graeci_,
through which they were reading their way. On Sundays the
congregation rarely numbered a dozen. It seemed that, as the end of
the Vicar's task drew nearer, so the prospect of filling the church
receded and became more shadowy. And if his was a queer plight,
Jacky Pascoe's was queerer. The Bryanite continued to come by night
and help, but at rarer intervals. He was discomforted in mind, as
anyone could see, and at length he took Mr. Raymond aside and made
confession.

"I must go away; that's what 'tis. My burden is too great for me to
bear."

"Why," said Mr. Raymond, who had grown surprisingly tolerant during
the last twelve months, "what cause have you, of all men, to feel
dejected? You can set the folk here on fire like flax." He sighed.

"That's azactly the reason--I can set 'em afire with a breath, but I
can't hold 'em under. I make 'em too strong for me--_and I'm
afeard_. Parson, dear, it's the gospel truth; for two years I've a
been strivin' agen myself, wrastlin' upon my knees, and all to hold
this parish in." He mopped his face. "'Tis like fightin' with
beasts at Ephesus," he said.

"Do you want to hold them in?"

"I do, and I don't. I've got to try, anyway. Sometimes I tell
mysel' 'tis putting a hand to the plough and turning back; and then I
reckon I'll go on. But when the time comes I can't. I'm afeard, I
tell 'ee." He paused. "I've laid it before the Lord, but He don't
seem to help. There's two voices inside o' me. 'Tis a terrible
responsibility."

"But the people: what are you afraid of their doing?"

"I don't know. You don't know what a runaway hoss will do, but
you're afeared all the same." He sank his voice. "There's
wantonness, for one thing--six love-children born in the parish this
year, and more coming. They do say that Vashti Clemow destroyed her
child. And Old Man Johns--him they found dead on the rocks under the
Island--he didn't go there by accident. 'Twas a calm day, too."

As often as not Taffy worked late and blew his forge-fire alone in
the church, the tap of his hammer making hollow music in the desolate
aisles. He was working thus one windy night in February, when the
doo