ened his lips except to say, in a
resounding bass undertone, like the tuning of a violoncello, "Sehon,
King of the Amorites; for His mercy endureth for ever; and Og the King
of Basan: for His mercy endureth for ever"--a quotation which may seem
to have slight bearing on the present occasion, but, as with every other
anomaly, adequate knowledge will show it to be a natural sequence. Mr.
Rann was inwardly maintaining the dignity of the Church in the face of
this scandalous irruption of Methodism, and as that dignity was bound up
with his own sonorous utterance of the responses, his argument naturally
suggested a quotation from the psalm he had read the last Sunday
afternoon.

The stronger curiosity of the women had drawn them quite to the edge of
the Green, where they could examine more closely the Quakerlike costume
and odd deportment of the female Methodists. Underneath the maple there
was a small cart, which had been brought from the wheelwright's to serve
as a pulpit, and round this a couple of benches and a few chairs had
been placed. Some of the Methodists were resting on these, with their
eyes closed, as if wrapt in prayer or meditation. Others chose to
continue standing, and had turned their faces towards the villagers
with a look of melancholy compassion, which was highly amusing to Bessy
Cranage, the blacksmith's buxom daughter, known to her neighbours as
Chad's Bess, who wondered "why the folks war amakin' faces a that'ns."
Chad's Bess was the object of peculiar compassion, because her hair,
being turned back under a cap which was set at the top of her head,
exposed to view an ornament of which she was much prouder than of her
red cheeks--namely, a pair of large round ear-rings with false garnets
in them, ornaments condemned not only by the Methodists, but by her own
cousin and namesake Timothy's Bess, who, with much cousinly feeling,
often wished "them ear-rings" might come to good.

Timothy's Bess, though retaining her maiden appellation among her
familiars, had long been the wife of Sandy Jim, and possessed a handsome
set of matronly jewels, of which it is enough to mention the heavy
baby she was rocking in her arms, and the sturdy fellow of five in
knee-breeches, and red legs, who had a rusty milk-can round his neck by
way of drum, and was very carefully avoided by Chad's small terrier.
This young olive-branch, notorious under the name of Timothy's Bess's
Ben, being of an inquiring disposition, unchecked b