“I shall thank him,” returned Grace simply, “and return to my pipe, but I do sometimes think it is too weak an indulgence of a slavish habit.”

“Hardly worth while to thank Penhallow; he will have forgotten all about it.”

“But I shall not.”

They smoked and talked politics, and the village and their work, until at last, after one of the pipe-filling pauses, Grace said, “I ought not to have taken that cider, but it singularly refreshed me.  You did not partake.”

“No, it disagrees with me.”

“I feel it, Brother Rivers.  I feel it slightly, and—­I—­a man who preaches temperance, total abstinence—­”

“My dear Grace, that is not temperance.  There may be intemperance in the way a man puts his opinions before others—­a man may hurt his own cause—­”

Grace returned quickly, “You were in our church Wednesday night—­I saw you.  You think I was intemperate?”

“Frankly, yes.  You were abusive.  You are too well self-governed to understand the working-man’s temptations.  You preached from the heart as you felt, without the charity of the head.”

“Perhaps—­perhaps,” he returned humbly; and then with a quite gentle retort, “Don’t you sometimes preach too much from the head, Brother Rivers?”

“Yes, that may be the case.  I am conscious sometimes that I lack your power of direct appeal—­your personal application of the truth.  I ought to preach the first half of the sermon—­the appeal to the reason, the head part—­and ask you to conclude with the heart share—­the personal application of my cold logic.”

“Let us try it,” said Grace rising and much amused; “cold, Rivers! your cold logic!  There is nothing cold in all your nature.  Let us go home; we have had a good talk.”

As they walked down the avenue Grace said, “What are you doing about Lamb?  Is it really wise to talk to him?”

“Just now,” said the rector, “he has acquired a temporary conscience in the shape of a congested stomach.  I talked to him a little.  He is penitent, or says he is, and as his mother is sometimes absent, I have set Billy to care for him; some one must.  I have found that to keep Billy on a job you must give him a daily allowance of chewing tobacco; that answers.”

“Bad company, Brother Rivers.”

“Oh, there is no guile in Billy.”

They parted at the Grey Pine gate.  Rivers had innocently prepared remote mischief, which by no possible human foresight could he have anticipated.  When, walking in the quiet of a lonely wood, a man sets his foot on a dead branch, the far end stirs another, and the motion so transmitted agitates a half dozen feet away the leaves of a group of ferns.  The man stops and suspects some little woodland citizen as the cause of the unexplained movement; thus it is in the affairs of life.  We do some innocent thing and are puzzled to explain how it brings about remote mischief.

Meanwhile an unendurable craving for drink beset the man Lamb, who was the prey of slowly lessening delusions.  Guardian Billy chewed his daily supply of tobacco and sat at the window in the hot second-storey room feeding Lamb with brief phrases concerning what he saw on the street.