“I will try, sir.  It was all dark to me for days.  For it appeared to me very nat’ral that, seeing they had no bread in the locker, and hearing tell of leaven which they weren’t to eat, they should think it had summat to do with their having none of any sort.  But He didn’t seem to think it was right of them to fall into the blunder.  For why then?  A man can’t be always right.  He may be like myself, a foremast-man with no schoolin’ but what the winds and the waves puts into him, and I’m thinkin’ those fishermen the Lord took to so much were something o’ that sort.  ‘How could they help it?’ I said to myself, sir.  And from that I came to ask myself, ’Could they have helped it?’ If they couldn’t, He wouldn’t have been vexed with them.  Mayhap they ought to ha’ been able to help it.  And all at once, sir, this mornin’, it came to me.  I don’t know how, but it was give to me, anyhow.  And I flung down my rake, and I ran in to the old woman, but she wasn’t in the way, and so I went back to my work again.  But when I saw you, sir, a readin’ upon the lilies o’ the field, leastways, the lilies o’ the water, I couldn’t help runnin’ out to tell you.  Isn’t it a satisfaction, sir, when yer dead reckonin’ runs ye right in betwixt the cheeks of the harbour?  I see it all now.”

“Well, I want to know, old Rogers.  I’m not so old as you, and so I may live longer; and every time I read that passage, I should like to be able to say to myself, ‘Old Rogers gave me this.’”

“I only hope I’m right, sir.  It was just this:  their heads was full of their dinner because they didn’t know where it was to come from.  But they ought to ha’ known where it always come from.  If their hearts had been full of the dinner He gave the five thousand hungry men and women and children, they wouldn’t have been uncomfortable about not having a loaf.  And so they wouldn’t have been set upon the wrong tack when He spoke about the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees; and they would have known in a moment what He meant.  And if I hadn’t been too much of the same sort, I wouldn’t have started saying it was but reasonable to be in the doldrums because they were at sea with no biscuit in the locker.”

“You’re right; you must be right, old Rogers.  It’s as plain as possible,” I cried, rejoiced at the old man’s insight.  “Thank you.  I’ll preach about it to-morrow.  I thought I had got my sermon in Foxborough Wood, but I was mistaken:  you had got it.”

But I was mistaken again.  I had not got my sermon yet.

I walked with him to his cottage and left him, after a greeting with the “old woman.”  Passing then through the village, and seeing by the light of her candle the form of Catherine Weir behind her counter, I went in.  I thought old Rogers’s tobacco must be nearly gone, and I might safely buy some more.  Catherine’s manner was much the same as usual.  But as she was weighing my purchase, she broke out all at once: