Craig spoke abruptly, with the directness of a man who knows what he has to say and whose business presses. "It's your duty to marry Amanda Seagrave.”

Ashgrave knew how greatly his desire ran with his duty, and he knew too that his own obstinacy of anger under compulsion had left him merely the husk of duty without the kernel of reward. Craig's words carried the sting of his own self-thwartings.

"Could n't you meddle a little?" he sneered. "It's my duty," Craig began.

"Oh, you're great on duty, ain't you?" interrupted Ashgrave.

"You've ruined the girl," Craig began again.

"How do you know she has n't ruined me?" demanded Ashgrave, determined that the clergyman should not finish his sentence.

"You 've brought disgrace to her family," he went on without heed to the interruption.

"They were ready enough to disgrace me when I did want to marry her," said Ashgrave, sullenly.

"And because she clung to you and gave herself to you, you take your revenge on the defenceless girl, like a great hulking coward.”

Surprise at this non-clerical tone of attack prevented Ashgrave from interrupting. For answer he was reduced to the assertion:

"You know whether I 'm a coward or not."

"So do you," said Craig sharply. "The man who 'll take advantage of weakness don't need anybody to tell him he's a coward."

Ashgrave flushed under sting of truth. He resented it from a clergyman as he would from a woman. It was true he had attacked Craig once, but he felt with regard to it much as he would if he had struck a woman. There

was cowardice in attacking one who, by nature or calling, was barred from defence, and it was this that gave Craig's charge its point. Under sudden memory, he placed a curb on his rising anger.

"You want to drive me to hit you again," he said.

Craig misinterpreted his speech.

"You would n't threaten, if you did n't know you were wrong."

"Damn you!" he shouted. "It's none of your business whether I 'm right or wrong. Go play the parson among girls and white-livered cusses."

He turned and walked away, afraid, in spite of his resolve, that he might again strike Craig. The desire to do so was strong on him, almost as strong as on the morning when he struck Barnaby. Some of these days, when that desire came, he would strike a man and kill him. Might it not be as well to do it now and have the thing over? He glanced from the corner of his eye at the clergyman, who was following him, with a dim wonder how he would look, dead, and whether a single blow would do the work? He hoped not, for he felt the lust to strike and mangle and revel in the work of killing.

"Have a care,” Craig called after him. "If you don't marry the girl, I'll not only deny you the communion, but I'll see you 're expelled from the church."

Even in his narrowness, he was too large-minded to take account of the personal in the other's taunt.

As for Ashgrave, the threat struck fear for the first time through the armour of his anger. Thus far, in spite of all his vagaries, he had striven, with almost pathetic insistence, to maintain position in the community. He understood himself well enough to know that to break definitely with it meant swift deterioration.

He knew too well the community not to understand what expulsion from the church meant.

Ashgrave started back, turning quickly. Craig was certain he was about to attack him, and sought decision whether or not he should resist. The instinct of personal

defence had long struck him as opposed to Biblical command, but he had never followed the issue to conclusive judgment. It was scarcely the time to do so, with this young giant bearing down on him in angry hostility.

"It is n't your business," Ashgrave began, pausing in his strides only when beside him, "but so you won't think it's your meddling that 's done it, I'll tell you I've decided already to marry the girl. If you'd stuck your nose in before I promised, you 'd have dished the whole thing. If you don't want to do it now, get off my farm, and get off damned quick!”

The clergyman grew white with the agony of knowledge. So this brute was to marry Amanda! There was a strange straining at his heart-strings in the thought. Surely God was laying a heavy cross on him!

CHAPTER XXXII

ASHGRAVE AND BLANKET

ELMONT, as county-town, commanded respect that was sadly reduced by its toleration of a tavern and a Roman Catholic mission. The former was under suspicion of illicit liquor selling; the latter under perpetual indictment as a menace to Christianity. When Joe Ashgrave separated himself from bodily association with Padanaram and instead adopted regular Saturday afternoon, with occasional Sunday, visits to Belmont, there came into being in the former village a sweetly Christian certainty that he would fall under one, and possibly under both, of these baleful influences.

The regularity of these visits began in sheer hunger for companionship, from which he had done as much to cut himself off, by his absurd marriage, as had been done through the unsupported suspicions aroused by Barnaby's disappearance. It was barely a fortnight after the marriage, from which Amanda had gone to her father's home and he to the lonely hill-farm, when he saw Blanket, who never cherished an animosity strong enough to prevent his welcoming any man as a gossip.

'Any news?" Ashgrave asked, not undesirous of hearing what the village might be thinking and saying of his affairs, though ready on the instant to resent its interference.

"Nothin' I've heerd on," said Blanket, shaking his head. 'Seem 's ef folks never would get their breath back so's they c'd talk agin."

"You haven't lost yours, have you?" asked Ashgrave, half-laughing.

"Wall," he explained, "things hes come so thick an' fas' lately, it kinder seem 's ef a feller did n't know which eend to begin at. Fact is, ye kinder feel's ef ye was plumped down in the middle an' hed to work towards both eends at wunce, ef you 's ever goin' to get out."

"Humph! Padanaram must have grown into a sort of lively place," said Ashgrave. "I should never have expected it."

"Wall, thet 's so'thin' as ye look at it," Blanket rejoined. "Gin'rally speakin' they keep a doin' an' a talkin' all the time, an' I don't see ef 'twas big as Bosting, they could du eny more. Thar'd jest be more folks to scatter it over."

"What they talking about now?"

"Wall, thar's thet feller Barnaby; or ruther, thar hain't thet feller Barnaby. He kinder makes more talk now he hain't thar 'n he did when he was. It's kinder like one o' these ere steam ingines, thet kin back's well's it kin go furwards.”

"They seem to have got Barnaby on the brain," said Ashgrave, impatiently. "Nobody asked where he came from when he dropped out o' the sky. What in thunder are they so particular where he went to, when he took a notion to leave again?"

"'T ain't got a habit yet tu hev men go out like a candle when ye say 'puff!' P'raps when it hes, we won't be no more cu'rous whar they be 'n we be whar the candle-flame is a'ter you've blown it out. They say thar's nothin' like gettin' used to things."

"Perhaps that 's so," rejoined Ashgrave bitterly," but there are some things it 's damned hard getting used to.” "Yep," said Blanket cautiously, "yep, I sh'd think