Out on the warren, notwithstanding the hour and the mist, it was still fairly light, the zigzagging sandy path plainly visible between the heath, furze brakes, stunted firs and thorn bushes.  The young clergyman, although more familiar with crowded pavements and flare of gas-lamps than open moorland in the deepening dusk, pursued his way without difficulty.  What a wild region it was though!  He thought of the sober luxury of the library at The Hard, the warmth, the shaded lights, the wealth of books; of the grace of Damaris’ clothing and her person, and wondered how people of position and education could be content to live in so out of the way and savage a spot.  It was melancholy to a degree, in his opinion.—­Oh! well, he must do his best to wake it up, infuse a spirit of progress into it more in keeping with nineteenth-century ideas.  Everyone would be grateful to him—­

A little questioning pause—­assurance in momentary eclipse.  Then with renewed cheerfulness—­Of course they would—­the upper classes, that is.  For they must feel the disadvantages of living in such a back-water.  He gave them credit for the wish to advance could they but find the way.  All they needed was leadership, which Canon Horniblow—­evidently past his work—­was powerless to supply.  He, Sawyer, came as a pioneer.  Once they grasped that fact they would rally to him.  The good Miss Minetts were rallying hard, so to speak, already.  Oh! there was excellent material in Deadham among the gentlefolk.  It merely needed working, needed bringing out.

From the lower, the wage-earning class, sunk as it was in ignorance, he must, he supposed, expect but a poor response, opposition not impossibly.  Opposition would not daunt him.  You must be prepared to do people good, if not with, then against their will.  He was here to make them rebel against and shake off the remnants of the Dark Ages amid which they so extraordinarily appeared still to live.  He had no conception so low a state of civilization could exist within little over a hundred miles of the metropolis!—­It was a man’s work, anyhow, and he must put his back into it.  Must organize—­word of power—­organize night classes, lectures with lantern slides, social evenings, a lads’ club.  Above all was there room and necessity for this last.  The Deadham lads were very rowdy, very unruly.  They gathered at corners in an objectionable manner; hung about the public-house.  He must undersell the public-house by offering counter attractions.  Amongst the men he suspected a sad amount of drinking.  Their speech, too, was so reprehensibly coarse.  He had heard horrible language in the village street.  He reproved the offenders openly, as was his duty, and his admonitions were greeted with a laugh, an insolent, offensive, jeering laugh.

Sawyer cut at the dark straggling furzes bordering the path with his walking-stick.  Recollection of that laugh made him go red about the ears; made his skin tingle and his eyes smart.  It represented an insult not only to himself but to his cloth.  Yet he’d not lost control of himself, he was glad to remember, though the provocation was rank—­