“I publish the banns of marriage between Amos Thorn, bachelor, and Dinah Mary Hannaford, spinster, both of this parish.  If any of you know cause, or just impediment, why these two persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony, ye are to declare it.  This is for the first time of asking.”

Again there followed a rustle of many curious folk; but a different emotion animated it, a different sound infused it.  Human nature woke up and buzzed.  This was more than merely pleasant; it was interesting.  Mr. Thorn and Dinah Hannaford were not in the little church to face two hundred pairs of eyes.  Jonas Lethbridge accompanied his father, and while the ancient grave-digger’s head drooped and his mouth trembled, where it fell in over naked gums, the young man gazed unflinchingly before him, and no quiver marked his strong, hard face and dark eyes.  He kept them fixed unblinking on a stained glass window that represented Christ bidding the waves be still.

Again the old-time neighbour of Sexton Lethbridge stumped along beside him under spring leaves; but p. 173Jonas had disappeared as soon as the service was ended.

“Very sorry for your son, my dear soul; for I lay the fire in his eye was burning out of his heart if us could have but seen it,” said Mr. Chugg, the blacksmith.  “What a courage he’ve got to come to worship!”

“’Tis a very dreadful thing for all of us, Chugg.”

Mr. Lethbridge spoke wearily.  Of late his natural forces were abated, and Jonas did much of the work of the churchyard.

“Every maiden in the village be sorry for him,” said the blacksmith.

“An’ well they might be.”

“Thorn hadn’t the brass to be there hisself, I see.  A chap from Princetown ringed tenor bell to-day.”

“God won’t never prosper such treachery, you mark me,” said Mr. Lethbridge.

“If ’tis God’s business to put down treachery, He’m a thought behind His work—to say it respectful.  My experience is that the ungodly do very well ’pon Dartymoor.  Be your sister going to bide with you?”

“Yes; she’m stopping.  Her wouldn’t go in the almshouse when the wedding fell through.  But it won’t be for long.  I’m getting ripe an’ ready for the grave myself now.”

p. 174“The women of this generation ban’t no better than reptile toads.  But your young chap will find a good wife come presently, please God.  There’s a tidy maid here an’ there yet.”

“Not him.  He’ll bide a bachelor for evermore.  He’m so bitter as gall to the roots of his being since she wrote that letter.  It ha............