The evangelist glanced round the chapel as the minister gave out the hymn.  The heads of the boys were bent over their hymn-books, searching, with whispering, among the pages which they turned with wet thumbs.  There was no apathy now.  All the slow sun-burnt faces showed signs of having understood.  One or two men sat with their eyes fixed on the evangelist as if waiting for more.  A woman wiped her eyes and sighed.  There was no restlessness.  He had succeeded in making all these people, so different from the driven, excited, underfed congregation he constantly saw, think from beginning to end of his poor people, and had succeeded in making them sorry.  He was content.

With that inarticulate desire to come into close contact with those who have moved them, which one knows among the poor, many of the congregation crowded round the pulpit to shake hands with the evangelist who leaned over the side, gripping hand after hand.

“A very good meeting,” said the steward, looking round with an air of satisfaction.

“You’ve made me feel very small, sir,” said a young man to the evangelist.  “I’ve a good deal further to go yet.”

“It’s true of us all,” replied the evangelist, shaking his hand fervently.

Anne Hilton had returned from the farmer to whom she had sold one of her pigs, and fed the animals, but had not taken off the linen pocket which she tied round her waist under her petticoat, and which held her money.  She was trying to get at it now in the narrow pew.  She knocked down a hymn-book and several pennies rolled under the feet of the out-going congregation.  A young woman, with roses in her best hat, nudged another and laughed.  A big boy stooped to pick up two, and restored them with a purple face.  Anne replaced them in the linen pocket, shook her skirt down again, wrapped something in a piece of an old envelope, and beckoning the steward gave it to him, then followed the others through the blue square of the doorway.  The steward approached the evangelist with a rather embarrassed smile.

“Our good sister’s a bit queer,” he said.  “I don’t know why she couldn’t put it in the collection box.”

The evangelist unwrapped the envelope and disclosed a sovereign.  He paused.

“It’s a big gift for a poor woman,” he said in a moment.  “She needed to make up her mind a bit first.  The collection box came too soon.”

“I’ve no doubt you’re right,” said the minister.  “She’s a good woman if a little erratic, and a sovereign means a large part of her week’s takings.”

“I don’t think she ought to have given it,” said the steward’s wife, who was waiting for her husband to drive her home.  “She’ll need help herself if she gives away like that.  She always must be different from other people.”