What his particular doctrine was I did not inquire, nor did I wish for any information on that point.  Doubtless he was a Dissenter of some kind living in a village where there was no chapel; the services were for the family, but were also attended by a few of the villagers and some persons from neighbouring farms who preferred a simpler form of worship to that of the Church.

It was not strange that this little community should have been regarded with something like disfavour by the other villagers.  For these others, man for man, made just as much money, and paid less rent for their small cottages, and, furthermore, received doles from the vicar and his well-to-do parishioners, yet they could not better their position, much less afford the good clothing, books, music, and other pleasant things which the independent woodman bestowed on his family.  And they knew why.  The woodman’s very presence in their midst was a continual reproach, a sermon on improvidence and intemperance, which they could not avoid hearing by thrusting their fingers into their ears.

During my stay with these people something occurred to cause them a very deep disquiet.  The reader will probably smile when I tell them what it was.  Awaking one night after midnight I heard the unusual sound of voices in earnest conversation in the room below; this went on until I fell asleep again.  In the morning we noticed that our landlady had a somewhat haggard face, and that the daughters also had pale faces, with purple marks under the eyes, as if they had kept their mother company in some sorrowful vigil.  We were not left long in ignorance of the cause of this cloud.  The good woman asked if we had been much disturbed by the talking.  I answered that I had heard voices and had supposed that friends from a distance had arrived overnight and that they had sat up talking to a late hour.  No—­that was not it, she said; but someone had arrived late, a son who was sixteen years old, and who had been absent for some days on a visit to relations in another county.  When they gathered round him to hear his news he confessed that while away he had learnt to smoke, and he now wished them to know that he had well considered the matter, and was convinced that it was not wrong nor harmful to smoke, and was determined not to give up his tobacco.  They had talked to him—­father, mother, brothers, and sisters —­using every argument they could find or invent to move him, until it was day and time for the woodman to go to his woods, and the others to their several occupations.  But their “all-night sitting” had been wasted; the stubborn youth had not been convinced nor shaken.  When, after morning prayers, they got up from their knees, the sunlight shining in upon them, they had made a last appeal with tears in their eyes, and he had refused to give the promise they asked.  The poor woman was greatly distressed.  This young fellow, I thought, favours his mother in features, but mentally he is perhaps more like his father.  Being a smoker myself I ventured to put in a word for him.  They were distressing themselves too much, I told her; smoking in moderation was not only harmless, especially to those who worked out of doors, but it was a well-nigh universal habit, and many leading men in the religious world, both churchmen and dissenters, were known to be smokers.