Brightness fell upon him.  He had a name for the tearfulness and splendor of his eloquence.  He could conduct himself fancifully:  now he was Pharaoh wincing under the plagues, now he was the Prodigal Son longing to eat at the pigs’ trough, now he was the Widow of Nain rejoicing at the recovery of her son, now he was a parson in Nineveh squirming under the prophecy of Jonah; and his hearers winced or longed, rejoiced or squirmed.  Congregations sought him to preach in their pulpits, and he chose such as offered the highest reward, pledging the richest men for his wage and the cost of his entertainment and journey.  But Ben would rule over no chapel.  “I wait for the call from above,” he said.

His term at Carmarthen at an end, he came to Deinol.  His father met him in a doleful manner.

“An old boy very cruel is the Parson,” Abel whined.  “Has he not strained Gwen for his tithes?  Auction her he did and bought her himself for three pounds and half a pound.”

Ben answered:  “Go now and say the next Saturday Benshamin Lloyd will give mouthings on tithes in Capel Dissenters.”

Ben stood in the pulpit, and spoke to the people of Capel Dissenters.

“How many of you have been to his church?” he cried.  “Not one male bach or one female fach.  Go there the next Sabbath, and the black muless will not say to you:  ’Welcome you are, persons Capel.  But there’s glad am I to see you.’  A comic sermon you will hear.  A sermon got with half-a-crown postal order.  Ask Postman.  Laugh highly you will and stamp on the floor.  Funny is the Parson in the white frock.  Ach y fy, why for he doesn’t have a coat preacher like Respecteds?  Ask me that.  From where does his Church come from?  She is the inheritance of Satan.  The only thing he had to leave, and he left her to his friends the parsons.  Iss-iss, earnest affair is this.  Who gives him his food?  We.  Who pays for Vicarage?  We.  Who feeds his pony?  We.  His cows?  We.  Who built his church?  We.  With stones carted from our quarries and mortar messed about with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our fathers.”

At the gate of the chapel men discussed Ben’s words; and two or three of them stole away and herded Gwen into the corner of the field; and they caught her and cut off her tail, and drove a staple into her udder.  Sunday morning eleven men from Capel Dissenters, with iron bands to their clogs on their feet, and white aprons before their bellies, shouted without the church:  “We are come to pray from the book.”  The Parson was affrighted, and left over tolling his bell, and he bolted and locked the door, against which he set his body as one would set the stub of a tree.

Running at the top of their speed the railers came to Ben, telling how the Parson had put them to shame.

“Iobs you are,” Ben answered.  “The boy bach who loses the key of his house breaks into his house.  Does an old wench bar the dairy to her mishtress?”