Excitement within the holy edifice reached fever-heat when a most unwonted worshipper appeared in the venerable shape of Mr. Lezzard.  He was supported by his married daughter and his grandson.  They sought and found a very prominent position under the lectern, and it was immediately apparent that no mere conventional attendance for the purpose of praising their Maker had drawn Mr. Lezzard and his relations.  Indeed he had long been of the Baptist party, though it derived but little lustre from him.  Much whispering passed among the trio.  Then his daughter, having found the place she sought in a prayer-book, handed it to Mr. Lezzard, and he made a big cross in pencil upon the page and bent the volume backwards so that its binding cracked very audibly.  Gaffer then looked about him with a boldness he was far from feeling; but the spectacle of Mr. Blee, hard by, fortified his spirit.  He glared across the aisle and Billy glared back.

Then the bells stopped, the organ droned, and there came a clatter of iron nails on the tiled floor.  Boys and men proceeded to the choir stalls and Mr. Shorto-Champernowne fluttered behind, with his sermon in his hand.  Like a stately galleon of the olden time he swept along the aisle, then reached his place, cast one keen glance over the assembled congregation, and slowly sinking upon his hassock enveloped his face and whiskers in snowy lawn and prayed a while.

The service began and that critical moment after the second lesson was reached with dreadful celerity.  Doctor Parsons, having read a chapter from the New Testament, which he emerged from the congregation to do, and which he did ill, though he prided himself upon his elocution, returned to his seat as the Vicar rose, adjusted his double eyeglasses and gave out a notice as follows: 

“I publish the banns of marriage between William Blee, Bachelor, and Mary Coomstock, Widow, 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.”

There was a momentary pause.  Then, nudged by his daughter, who had grown very pale, Gaffer Lezzard rose.  His head shook and he presented the appearance of a man upon the verge of palsy.  He held up his hand, struggled with his vocal organs and at last exploded these words, sudden, tremulous, and shrill: 

“I deny it an’ I defy it!  The wummon be mine!”

Mr. Lezzard succumbed instantly after this effort.  Indeed, he went down as though shot through the head.  He wagged and gasped and whispered to his grandson,—­

“Wheer’s the brandy to?”

Whereupon this boy produced a medicine bottle half full of spirits, and his grandfather, with shaking fingers, removed the cork and drank the contents.  Meantime the Vicar had begun to speak; but he suffered another interruption.  Billy, tearing himself from the miller’s restraining hand, leapt to his feet, literally shaking with rage.  He was dead to his position, oblivious of every fact save that his banns of marriage had been forbidden before the assembled Christians of Chagford.  He had waited to find a wife until he was sixty years old—­for this!