uring farms who preferred a simpler form of worship
to that of the Church.

It was not strange that this little community should have been regarded
with something like disfavour by the other villagers. For these others,
man for man, made just as much money, and paid less rent for their
small cottages, and, furthermore, received doles from the vicar and his
well-to-do parishioners, yet they could not better their position, much
less afford the good clothing, books, music, and other pleasant things
which the independent woodman bestowed on his family. And they knew why.
The woodman's very presence in their midst was a continual reproach,
a sermon on improvidence and intemperance, which they could not avoid
hearing by thrusting their fingers into their ears.

During my stay with these people something occurred to cause them a very
deep disquiet. The reader will probably smile when I tell them what
it was. Awaking one night after midnight I heard the unusual sound of
voices in earnest conversation in the room below; this went on until
I fell asleep again. In the morning we noticed that our landlady had a
somewhat haggard face, and that the daughters also had pale faces, with
purple marks under the eyes, as if they had kept their mother company in
some sorrowful vigil. We were not left long in ignorance of the cause
of this cloud. The good woman asked if we had been much disturbed by
the talking. I answered that I had heard voices and had supposed that
friends from a distance had arrived overnight and that they had sat up
talking to a late hour. No--that was not it, she said; but someone had
arrived late, a son who was sixteen years old, and who had been absent
for some days on a visit to relations in another county. When they
gathered round him to hear his news he confessed that while away he
had learnt to smoke, and he now wished them to know that he had well
considered the matter, and was convinced that it was not wrong nor
harmful to smoke, and was determined not to give up his tobacco. They
had talked to him--father, mother, brothers, and sisters--using every
argument they could find or invent to move him, until it was day and
time for the woodman to go to his woods, and the others to their several
occupations. But their "all-night sitting" had been wasted; the stubborn
youth had not been convinced nor shaken. When, after morning prayers,
they got up from their knees, the sunlight shining in upon them, they
had made a