“Hope you’ll enjoy your dinner!” Her last words still rang in his ear. His dinner! Cold meat wrapped in a “muckinger,” and consumed on chapel benches among drab Elders and elderly Sisters and better-lost Brothers and dismal rat-catching Deacons. No, sooner a crust and cheese at the bar. But why not roast beef and Yorkshire pudding in the parlour—why not make his lie true? Yes, lies were reprehensible: truth was always best, and his chaps began to water with ethical excitement. But alas, with a sudden misgiving he put his hand in his pocket. Not a farthing! In the agitation of his chapel-going, he had forgotten to transfer his purse to the Sunday suit—nay, even the ninety pounds were left in the discarded waistcoat, he remembered with an unreasonable chill. He was to be nailed to his lie, then. True, he might possibly get credit, but it was an awkward situation at best. No, better go back to his cold meat—besides, his poor old father would be wondering and waiting. It would be cruel to desert and distract him, and, the rain appearing somewhat thinner, he turned up his coat-collar and started out, almost colliding at the archway with the Mott couple, lovingly entwined under a spacious umbrella. They at least had no need to dine in chapel. Mr. Charles Mott looked at him again with the same curious wonder. “You’re not going back?” he cried involuntarily.

“I can’t desert my dad!” Will answered, somewhat shamefacedly.

“And he must eat, Charley darling,” Mother Gander intervened. “You know how bad our Sunday dinners are.”

“I haven’t even got any money with me,” he cried, with a last wild hope. But Mother Gander did not respond to his longing for truth. “Lend him the umbrella, dearest,” she said ruthlessly. “We’ve another for the afternoon service.”

Accepting it with mitigated gratitude—the umbrella he was trusted with was worth more than the dinner, he thought bemusedly—he moved more slowly to the chapel; wondering, too, how hotel-keeping could be reconciled with the Sabbatarian conscience.

He found the meeting-house now turned into an eating-house. The congregation had, however, visibly thinned: only those who had no hosts or homes in Chipstone remaining for this love-feast, with the exception of Deacon Mawhood, who, rather than go home to his wife, remained at the table as presiding dignitary, flanked by great glass jugs of water. The ravages in the ranks appeared to Will an eloquent testimony to the spread of the doctrine in Chipstone proper: in his young days the sect had been more suburban and rural, and the chapel at that hour had seethed with hungry pilgrims. Still, there was quite a happy hubbub, and the spectacle, with its real sense of brotherhood, struck from him more sympathy than anything in the service; and when a Sister told her cherub not to “goffle” so, he was mysteriously touched by the old word, and the memories it roused, to a sincerer respect for the creed which satisfied Jinny. What fun the boys had had in the wagon, driving home with her!

Caleb was chewing a hunk of bread and meat. The handkerchief-parcel—shrunk like the congregation—incarnadined the bench. “Oi had to begin,” he explained apologetically, “seein’ as Oi’d said grace, expectin’ you back every second, and it seemed foolin’ with the Lord to wait more than ten minutes. Pity that dog worrited you. Be-yu-tiful things were brought out when you was gone. Where did you git to?”

He evaded the question. “I’m not hungry.”

“Not arter that walk of ourn!” cried Caleb incredulously. “Oi count you’ve had your dinner somewhere else.”

“Yes, off the dog!” he said a bit crossly.

Caleb smiled. “Oi’ll not believe that,” he said with an air of infinite cuteness.

“I’ll have a drink,” condescended Will.

“Do!” Caleb passed him a large tin mug of water. “And there’s plenty more where that come from.” Will knew it was Brother Quint—the “snob” or shoemaker who lived next door—who supplied these limitless streams.

“Ain’t she beautifully polished?” Caleb went on naÏvely, when his thirsty son set the mug down. “Holds noigh a quart—Oi never see sech mugs nowhere else! And Brother Quint’ll fill it with biling for our tea. There, Will! There’s your favourite sausages mother put in for you, special. None o’ your dogs in that!” And he chuckled, brimming over with holy glee.

Cooled by the long draught, Will allowed himself to be seduced by the veal sausages, and, finding with surprise that the first slid down his throat in a twinkling, he was soon depleting the parcel into a mere “muckinger.” And at this Caleb’s innocent happiness was complete.

But the fate that stalks mortals at their culminating felicities now sped its arrow. In excavating a pickled walnut from the remains of the parcel, Caleb loosed a minute cardboard box, which sprang maliciously to the floor and then, to the agitation of the neighbours, rolled round and round towards the table under the very eyes of the rat-catcher.

The Deacon stooped down zealously to pick it up, and then held it on high. It was a pill-box! “Who brought this?” he cried in stern prophetic accents, across the table.

The happy hubbub ceased, the holy glee was frozen. In a tense silence all eyes were turned on the profane symbol. Will saw his wretched father’s face go red and white, and his scraggy throat work painfully below the ragged white beard. Both the Flynts guessed at once that the careful Martha had slipped into the packet her husband’s usual pill before meals!

It was a dreadful moment. For a space in which all nature seemed to hold its breath, Caleb sat rigid and dumb.

“Whose propity is this?” asked the Deacon still more sternly, and Will divined the mighty struggle going on in his father’s quaint conscience; casuistic questions as to how far a pill-box conveyed unconsciously had been “brought” by him, or in what sense pills administered to him remorselessly from without could be said to be his “property.”

Then suddenly Caleb’s lips opened. “Oi count ’twas in my parcel,” he said in tremulous accents.

The sublimity of the confession thrilled Will: he even felt a curious moisture at his eyes. But before the Deacon, sitting there like a judge about to pronounce sentence, could say a word, a blinding glare, followed almost instantaneously by an appalling crashing and smashing right overhead, showed that nature had indeed held its breath and had now spoken in flame and thunder. Will’s first reflection when the daze had passed away, and the congregation found itself and its building providentially safe, was that it was indeed lucky his father had spoken first; otherwise his confession might have seemed extorted by terror. But Joshua Mawhood was not the Deacon to let such a situation pass without profit. “The Lord havin’ spoke, brethren,” said he, “there ain’t no need for my opinion. The thing Oi hate most in this lower world is hypocrisy and dissemblin’. ‘Roight up and down, Jo Perry,’ as the sayin’ goos. Ef we ain’t been destroyed, as we sat here guzzlin’ and guttlin’, ’tain’t no merit of the congregation, ’tis because the Lord bein’ marciful don’t destroy Sodom and Gomorrah so long as there’s one roighteous man.” He rose majestically and drew himself up to his full height, and held the pill-box even higher. “Brother Flynt, if you’ll kindly step out, Oi’ll hand you back your propity.”

No fiercer punishment could have been devised for Caleb’s gentle soul: the sinner, isolated, passing through his shrinking Brethren and Sisters, must come forward as to a confession table. No wonder the poor man held back.

“Oi don’t need it now, Deacon,” he said, with lips almost as white as his hair. “You can throw it away ef you like.”

With malicious enjoyment the Deacon slowly and solemnly lifted the lid of the pill-box and dipped in his fingers, to hold up the impious contents to the public execration. Then his face changed.

“Why, it’s salt!” he cried in angry disappointment. It was as if the devil were playing thimblerig with him.

“Oi was thinkin’ the missus had ought to put some in,” said Caleb, beaming again.

The woman of the baby-cart now found herself possessed of the Spirit. She sprang to her feet, a baby on either arm.

“We are the salt of the earth,” she shrilled, “wherewith the others shall be salted.”

“Hallelujah!” burst from the mutton-chop whiskers.

“Hallelujah!” responded the congregation, and a great anthem rolled out, outshouting the thunder.