’Doesto, Matt?  Ey, aw shouldn’t like to think He were so far off as they are, nor as cowd (cold) noather.’

‘Nay, lass, they’re noan so far off.  Didn’t owd David say, “As th’ mountens are raand abaat Jerusalem, so th’ Lord is raand abaat His people"?’

’He did, forsure.  But didn’t he say that a good man were like a tree planted by th’ brookside?’

’Yi; and he said summat else abaat a good woman, didn’t he, Miriam?’

‘What were that, lad?’

‘Why, didn’t th’ owd songster say, “Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by th’ sides o’ thine house, and thi childer like olive plants raand abaat thy table"?’

Miriam blushed, and held up her lips to be kissed; nor did Matt faintly warm them with his caresses.

* * * * *

That afternoon, as Matt and Miriam walked down the field-path towards the Rehoboth shrine, they wondered how it was that so much praise was rendered to the Almighty outside the temple made with hands.  Both of them had been taught to locate God in a house.  Rehoboth chapel was His dwelling-place—­not the earth with the fulness thereof, and the heavens with their declaration of glory.  Yet, somehow or other, they felt to-day that moor and meadow were sacred—­that their feet trod paths as holy as the worn stone aisle of the conventicle below.  The airs of spring swept round them, carrying notes from near and far—­whisperings from the foliage of trees, and cadences from moors through whose herbage the wind lisped, and from doughs down which it moaned.  Early flowers vied with the early greenery carpeting the fields, and the grass was long enough to wave in shadow and intermingle its countless glistening blades.  Then their hearts went out towards Nature’s harmonies; and tears started to Miriam’s eyes as the larks dropped their music from the sunny heights.  Now they passed patient oxen looking out at them with quiet, impressive eyes, and the plaintive bleat of the little lambs still brought many a throb to Miriam’s heart.

Turning down by the Clough, they met old Enoch and his wife, who, though on their way to Rehoboth, were so full of the spirit of the hour and the season that they thought little of the bald ritual and barn-like sanctuary that was drawing their steps.

‘This is grond, lad,’ said Enoch to Matt, as he threw back his shoulders to take a deep inspiration of the moorland air.  ’It’s fair like a breath o’ th’ Almeety.’

‘Yi; it’s comin’ fro’ th’ delectable mountains, for sure it is.  I’m just thinkin’ it’s too fine to go inside this afternoon.’

’I’ll tell thee what, Matt, I know summat haa that lad Jacob felt when he co’d th’ moorside th’ gate o’ heaven.’

‘Ey, bless thee, Enoch, it wernd half as grand as this!’ said his wife, as she plucked a spray of may blossom from a hawthorn that overarched the path through the Clough.

‘Mebbe not, lass; but aw know summat haa he felt like.’