be
done by a little fellow like Sam Phillips, Bill considered, could
be done by himself, seeing that he could pound Sam into wet clay if
circumstances required it. So here he was, pointing his big finger
towards three words at once, and turning his head on one side that he
might keep better hold with his eye of the one word which was to be
discriminated out of the group. The amount of knowledge Bartle Massey
must possess was something so dim and vast that Bill's imagination
recoiled before it: he would hardly have ventured to deny that the
schoolmaster might have something to do in bringing about the regular
return of daylight and the changes in the weather.

The man seated next to Bill was of a very different type: he was a
Methodist brickmaker who, after spending thirty years of his life in
perfect satisfaction with his ignorance, had lately "got religion," and
along with it the desire to read the Bible. But with him, too, learning
was a heavy business, and on his way out to-night he had offered as
usual a special prayer for help, seeing that he had undertaken this hard
task with a single eye to the nourishment of his soul--that he might
have a greater abundance of texts and hymns wherewith to banish evil
memories and the temptations of old habit--or, in brief language,
the devil. For the brickmaker had been a notorious poacher, and was
suspected, though there was no good evidence against him, of being the
man who had shot a neighbouring gamekeeper in the leg. However that
might be, it is certain that shortly after the accident referred to,
which was coincident with the arrival of an awakening Methodist preacher
at Treddleston, a great change had been observed in the brickmaker; and
though he was still known in the neighbourhood by his old sobriquet of
"Brimstone," there was nothing he held in so much horror as any further
transactions with that evil-smelling element. He was a broad-chested
fellow with a fervid temperament, which helped him better in imbibing
religious ideas than in the dry process of acquiring the mere human
knowledge of the alphabet. Indeed, he had been already a little shaken
in his resolution by a brother Methodist, who assured him that the
letter was a mere obstruction to the Spirit, and expressed a fear that
Brimstone was too eager for the knowledge that puffeth up.

The third beginner was a much more promising pupil. He was a tall but
thin and wiry man, nearly as old as Brimstone, with a very