arel usually reserved for "Cheppel Sunday." The
external elevation of his appearance from the worn and sober brown of
his daily "top-sark" seemed to produce a corresponding elevation of
the weaver's spirit. Despite the solemnity of the occasion, he seemed
tempted to let fall a sapient proverb of anything but a funereal tone.
On stepping into the kitchen and seeing the provision that had been
made for a repast, he did indeed intimate his intention of assisting
at the ceremony in the language of the time-honored wren who cried "I
helps" as she let a drop of water fall into the sea. At this moment
the clergyman from the chapel-of-ease on the Raise arrived at the
Moss, and Matthew prepared to put his precept into practice.

The priest, Nicholas Stevens by name, was not a Cumbrian. He had kept
his office through three administrations, and to their several forms
of legislation he had proved equally tractable. His spirit of
accommodation had not been quite so conspicuous in his dealings with
those whom he conceived to be beneath him. But in truth he had left
his parishioners very largely to their own devices. When he was moved
to come among them, it was with the preoccupied air not so much of the
student or visionary as of a man who was isolated from those about him
by combined authority, influence, and perhaps superior blood. He now
took his seat at the head of the table with the bearing of one to whom
it had never occurred to take a lower place. He said little at first,
and when addressed he turned his face slowly round to him who spoke
with an air of mingled abstraction and self-satisfaction, through
which a feeble smile of condescension struggled and seemed to say in a
mild voice, "Did you speak?"

Matthew sat at the foot of the table, and down each side were seated
the dalesmen, to the number of twenty-four. There were Thomas Fell and
Adam Rutledge, Job Leathes and Luke Cockrigg, John Jackson of Armboth,
and little Reuben Thwaite.

His reverence cut up the ham into slices as formal as his creed, while
old Matthew poured out the contents of two huge black jacks. Robbie
Anderson carried the plates to and fro; Mrs. Branthwaite and Liza
served out the barley and oaten bread.

The breakfast was hardly more than begun when the kitchen door was
partially opened, and the big head of a little man became visible on
the inner side of it, the body and legs of the new-comer not having
yet arrived in the apartment.

"Am I late?"