“You—­you to do it!  You to get up afore this rally o’ gentlefolks an’ forbid my holy banns, you wrinkled, crinkled, baggering auld lizard!  Gormed if I doan’t wring your—­”

“Silence in the house of God!” thundered Mr. Shorto-Champernowne, with tones so resonant that they woke rafter echoes the organ itself had never roused.  “Silence, and cease this sacrilegious brawling, or the consequences will be unutterably serious!  Let those involved,” he concluded more calmly, “appear before me in the vestry after divine service is at an end.”

Having frowned, in a very tragic manner, both on Mr. Blee and Mr. Lezzard, the Vicar proceeded with the service; but though Gaffer remained in his place Billy did not.  He rose, jammed on his hat, glared at everybody, and assumed an expression curiously similar to that of a stone demon which grinned from the groining of two arches immediately above him.  He then departed, growling to himself and shaking his fists, in another awful silence; for the Vicar ceased when he rose, and not until Billy disappeared and his footfall was heard no more did the angry clergyman proceed.

A buzz and hubbub, mostly of laughter, ascended when presently Mr. Shorto-Champernowne’s parishioners returned to the air; and any chance spectator beholding them had certainly judged he stood before an audience now dismissed from a theatre rather than the congregation of a church.

“Glad Will weern’t theer, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Blanchard.  “He’d ‘a’ laughed out loud an’ made bad worse.  Chris did as ’t was, awnly parson’s roarin’ luckily drowned it.  And Mr. Martin Grimbal, whose eye I catched, was put to it to help smilin’.”

“Ban’t often he laughs, anyway,” said Phoebe, who walked homewards with her father and the Blanchards; whereon Chris, from being in a boisterous vein of merriment, grew grave.  Together all returned to the valley.  Will was due in half an hour from Newtake, and Phoebe, as a special favour, had been permitted to dine at Mrs. Blanchard’s cottage with her husband and his family.  Clement Hicks had also promised to be of the party; but that was before the trouble of the previous week, and Chris knew he would not come.

Meantime, Gaffer Lezzard, supported by two generations of his family, explained his reasons for objecting to Mr. Blee’s proposed marriage.

“Mrs. Coomstock be engaged, right and reg’lar, to me,” he declared.  “She’d gived me her word ’fore ever Blee axed her.  I seed her essterday, to hear final ‘pon the subjec’, an’ she tawld me straight, bein’ sober as you at the time, as ‘t was me she wanted an’ meant for to have.  She was excited t’ other day an’ not mistress of herself ezacally; an’ the crafty twoad took advantage of it, an’ jawed, an’ made her drink an’ drink till her didn’t knaw what her was sayin’ or doin’.  But she’m mine, an’ she’ll tell ’e same as what I do; so theer’s an end on ’t.”

“I’ll see Mrs. Coomstock,” said the Vicar.  “I, myself will visit her to-morrow.”