Mr. Grimes had suggested to the Vicar in a very low whisper that the new chapel might perhaps be put down as a nuisance. “It ain’t for me to say, of course,” said Mr. Grimes, “and in the way of business one building is as good as another as long as you see your money. But buildings is stopped because they’re nuisances.” This occurred a day or two after the receipt of the agent’s letter from Turnover, and the communication was occasioned by orders given to Mr. Grimes to go on with the building instantly, unless he intended to withdraw from the job. “I don’t think, Grimes, that I can call a place of Christian worship a nuisance,” said the Vicar. To this Grimes rejoined that he had known a nunnery bell to be stopped because it was a nuisance, and that he didn’t see why a Methodist chapel bell was not as bad as a nunnery bell. Fenwick had declared that he would fight if he could find a leg to stand upon, and he thanked Grimes, saying that he would think of the suggestion. But when he thought of it, he did not see that any remedy was open to him on that side. In the meantime Mr. Puddleham attacked Grimes with great severity because the work was not continued. Mr. Puddleham, feeling that he had the Marquis at his back, was eager for the fight. He had already received in the street a salutation from the Vicar, cordial as usual, with the very slightest bend of his neck, and the sourest expression of his mouth. Mrs. Puddleham had already taught the little Puddlehams that the Vicarage cabbages were bitter with the wormwood of an endowed Establishment, and ought no longer to be eaten by the free children of an open Church. Mr. Puddleham had already raised up his voice in his existing tabernacle, as to the injury which was being done to his flock, and had been very touching on the subject of the little vineyard which the wicked king coveted. When he described himself as Naboth, it could not but be supposed that Ahab and Jezebel were both in Bullhampton. It went forth through the village that Mr. Puddleham had described Mrs. Fenwick as Jezebel, and the torch of discord had been thrown down, and war was raging through the parish.

There had come to be very high words indeed between Mr. Grimes and Mr. Puddleham, and some went so far as to declare that they had heard the builder threaten to punch the minister’s head. This Mr. Grimes denied stoutly, as the Methodist party were making much of it in consequence of Mr. Puddleham’s cloth and advanced years. “There’s no lies is too hot for them,” said Mr. Grimes, in his energy, and “no lawlessness too heavy.” Then he absolutely refused to put his hand to a spade or a trowel. He had his time named in his contract, he said, and nobody had a right to drive him. This was ended by the appearance on a certain Monday morning of a Baptist builder from Salisbury, with all the appurtenances of his trade, and with a declaration on Mr. Grimes’ part, that he would have the law on the two leading members of the Puddleham congregation, from whom he had received his original order. In truth, however, there had been no contract, and Mr. Grimes had gone to work upon a verbal order which, according to the Puddleham theory, he had already vitiated by refusing compliance with its terms. He, however, was hot upon his lawsuit, and thus the whole parish was by the ears.

It may be easily understood how much Mr. Fenwick would suffer from all this. It had been specially his pride that his parish had been at peace, and he had plumed himself on the way in which he had continued to clip the claws with which nature had provided the Methodist minister. Though he was fond of a fight himself, he had taught himself to know that in no way could he do the business of his life more highly or more usefully than as a peacemaker; and as a peacemaker he had done it. He had never put his hand within Mr. Puddleham’s arm, and whispered a little parochial nothing into his neighbour’s ear, without taking some credit to himself for his cleverness. He had called his peaches angels of peace, and had spoken of his cabbages as being dove-winged. All this was now over, and there was hardly one in Bullhampton who was not busy hating and abusing somebody else.

And then there came another trouble on the Vicar. Just at the end of January, Sam Brattle came up to the Vicarage and told Mr. Fenwick that he was going to leave the mill. Sam was dressed very decently; but he was attired in an un-Bullhampton fashion, which was not pleasant to Mr. Fenwick’s eyes; and there was about him an air which seemed to tell of filial disobedience and personal independence.

“But you mean to come back again, Sam?” said the Vicar.

“Well, sir; I don’t know as I do. Father and I has had words.”

“And that is to be a reason why you should leave him? You speak of your father as though he were no more to you than another man.”

“I wouldn’t a’ borne not a tenth of it from no other man, Mr. Fenwick.”

“Well—and what of that? Is there any measure of what is due by you to your father? Remember, Sam, I know your father well.”

“You do, sir.”

“He is a very just man, and he is very fond of you. You are the apple of his eye, and now you would bring his gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.”

“You ask mother, sir, and she’ll tell you how it is. I just said a word to him,—a word as was right to be said, and he turned upon me, and bade me go away and come back no more.”

“Do you mean that he has banished you from the mill?”

“He said what I tells you. He told mother afterwards, that if so as I would promise never to mention that thing again, I might come and go as I pleased. But I wasn’t going to make no such promise. I up and told him so; and then he—cursed me.”

For a moment or two the Vicar was silent, thinking whether in this affair Sam had been most wrong, or the old man. Of course he was hearing but one side of the question. “What was it, Sam, that he forbade you to mention?”

“It don’t matter now, sir; only I thought I’d better come and tell you, along of your being the bail, sir.”

“Do you mean that you are going to leave Bullhampton altogether?”

“To leave it altogether, Mr. Fenwick. I ain’t doing no good here.”

“And why shouldn’t you do good? Where can you do more good?”

“It can’t be good to be having words with father day after day.”

“But, Sam, I don’t think you can go away. You are bound by the magistrates’ orders. I don’t speak for myself, but I fear the police would be after you.”

“And is it to go on allays,—that a chap can’t move to better hisself, because them fellows can’t catch the men as murdered old Trumbull? That can’t be law,—nor yet justice.” Upon this there arose a discussion in which the Vicar endeavoured to explain to the young man that as he had evidently consorted with the men who were, on the strongest possible grounds, suspected to be the murderers, and as he had certainly been with those men where he had no business to be,—namely, in Mr. Fenwick’s own garden at night,—he had no just cause of complaint at finding his own liberty more crippled than that of other people. No doubt Sam understood this well enough, as he was sharp and intelligent; but he fought his own battle, declaring that as the Vicar had not prosecuted him for being in the garden, nobody could be entitled to punish him for that offence; and that as it had been admitted that there was no evidence connecting him with the murder, no policeman could have a right to confine him to one parish. He argued the matter so well, that Mr. Fenwick was left without much to say. He was unwilling to press his own responsibility in the matter of the bail, and therefore allowed the question to fall through,—tacitly admitting that if Sam chose to leave the parish, there was nothing in the affair of the murder to hinder him. He went back, therefore, to the inexpediency of the young man’s departure, telling him that he would rush right into the Devil’s jaws. “May be so, Mr. Fenwick,” said Sam, “but I’m sure I’ll never be out of ’em as long as I stays here in Bullhampton.”

“But what is it all about, Sam?” The Vicar, as he asked the question had a very distinct idea in his own head as to the cause of the quarrel, and was aware that his sympathies were with the son rather than with the father. Sam answered never a word, and the Vicar repeated his question. “You have quarrelled with your father before this, and have made it up. Why should not you make up this quarrel?”

“Because he cursed me,” said Sam.

“An idle word, spoken in wrath! Don’t you know your father well enough to take that for what it is worth? What was it about?”

“It was about Carry, then.”

“What had you said?”

“I said as how she ought to be............