THREE:"To calm the last moments of a sinner."
THREE:"To calm the last moments of a sinner."
THREE:"Hence, sir! away, unworthy son of the church! away for the presentwe shall soon find a means of bending your stubborn heart!""You might have found out, and not let me in fur all this. Here I've bin and gone and spent all your settlements on a milk-round, which I'd never have done if I hadn't thought summat more 'ud be coming in later."
THREE:"A minister of the Lord," repeated with some severity the man in black, "of the brotherhood named Ebenezer.""I can't understand, papa," said Anne Bardon, "how you can go on selling land to that odious Backfield."
THREE:"Now you're married."
THREE:It was down in the hollow by Totease, as unpromising an estate as one could wish, all on a slope, gorse-grown at the top, then a layer of bracken, and at the Totease fence a kind of oozy pulp, where a lavant dribbled in and out of the grass; to Reuben, however, it was a land of milk and honey. He turned up the soil of it with his foot, and blessed the wealden clay.
THREE:
THREE:Mr Keeling had expected an edifying half-hour when Dr Inglis gave out as his text, There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth, and as the discourse proceeded, he felt that his anticipations were amply justified. Based on this unshakable foundation, and buttressed by other stalwart pronouncements, the doctrine of eternal damnation wore a very safe and solid aspect. It was the justice of it that appealed to Mr Keeling. Mankind had been warned in a perfectly unmistakable manner that if they persisted in certain courses of action and in certain inabilities to believe, they would be punished for ever and ever. That was fair, that was reasonable: rules were made to be obeyed. If you were truly sorry for having disobeyed them, a secondary principle, called mercy, came to the succour of the repentant. But Dr Inglis did not say so much about that. He was concerned with the inflexibility of his text.
THREE:It was about nine o'clock when they came to Thornsdale, down on the Rother levels; the moon had risen and the marsh was smeethed in white. The air was thick with a strong-scented miasma, and beside the dykes long lines of willows faded into the mist. Here another orgy was started, in grotesque contrast with the pallid sleep of water. The gate that barred the Kent road was torn down, the bonfire prepared, the dance begun.The sun set, and Reuben had given up even the attempt to work. He wandered on Boarzell till the outline of its crest was lost in the black pit of night. Then a new anxiety began to fret him. Possibly all was going well since everybody said so, butsuppose the child was a girl! Up till now he had scarcely thought of such a thing, he had made sure that his child would be a boy, someone to help him in his struggle and to[Pg 84] reap the fruits of it after he was gone. But, suppose, after all, it should be a girl! Quite probably it would bewhy should he think it would not? The sweat stood on Reuben's forehead.