all the rest of the population that was not
resident in the village.

It has been said that there were once two public-houses in Waterland,
but that now there was but one. This was not owing to any want of
success in the case of the one which had become extinct; on the
contrary, the "Oldfield Arms" had been the more flourishing
establishment of the two, and was situated in the centre of the village.
Its sign, however, had long since disappeared; and it was now in the
hands of the rector, its principal apartment having been transformed
into a reading-room, and place for holding meetings. And how was this
brought about? Simply thus. When Bernard Oliphant first came to
Waterland, he found the "Oldfield Arms" doing a most excellent business;
so far as _that_ can be an excellent business which builds the
prosperity of one upon the ruin of hundreds. People grumbled at the
lowness of wages; wives were unable to procure money from their husbands
for decent dress; children were half-starved and two-thirds naked;
disease and dirt found a home almost everywhere; boys and girls grew up
in ignorance, for their parents could not afford to send them to school;
the men had no tidy clothes in which to appear at church. Yet, somehow
or other, the "Oldfield Arms" was never short of customers; and
customers, too, who paid, and paid well, sooner or later, for what they
consumed. So the rector went among the people, and told them plainly of
the sin of drunkenness, and pointed out the misery it brought, as their
own eyes could see. They confessed the truth--such as he could manage
to get hold of--and drank on as before. He was getting heart-sick and
miserable. Preach as he might--and he did preach the truth with all
faithfulness and love--the notices of ale, porter, and spirits, set up
in flaming colours in the windows and on the walls of the "Oldfield
Arms," preached far more persuasively in the cause of intemperance.

One day he came upon a knot of men standing just at the entrance of the
yard that led to the tap-room. They were none of them exactly drunk;
and certainly none were exactly sober. There were some among them whom
he never saw at church, and never found at home. He was grieved to see
these men in high discussion and dispute, when they ought to have been
busily engaged in some lawful calling. He stopped, and taking one of
them aside whose home was specially miserable, he said,--

"James, I'm grieved to see you he