The first Sunday of Will’s home-coming, nothing had been said about chapel. That, his elders thought, might be still a sore subject with the boy whose resentment at sacrificing his buttons on the altar had driven him “furrin.” Still more delicate was the theological position into which the couple themselves had gradually drifted, and of which they now—before a spectator and critic—grew uneasily conscious. Martha’s Ecclesia in Long Bradmarsh having collapsed almost as soon as she had been converted to it, she had no meeting-house to go to, and, almost simultaneously, Caleb, whose farm-wagons had recently been shifted to the new “looker’s” headquarters, ceased to attend his Chipstone Chapel. This was partly to keep his wife company of a Sunday, partly because so many miles there and back was getting too much for his legs. In consequence the pair had arrived by compromise at a Sunday ritual of their own, a sort of Peculiar Christadelphianism, and Uncle Lilliwhyte, who never entered any of the many houses of God—it was popularly supposed he would not or could not remove his gay-stringed beaver—would often loiter outside Frog Farm in Church hours, listening to their loudly trolled and hybrid hymnology in a sort of pious eavesdropping. That was Uncle Lilliwhyte’s individual contribution to the chaos of creeds that reigned in Bradmarsh.

But even this minimum of religion was denied the honest snake-seller when Will returned. The first Sunday, Caleb and Martha held their services furtively in their hermetically sealed bedroom, hardly daring to hum what they had so lustily intoned: by a common instinct they shrank from obtruding their departure from that straitness of doctrine in which Will had been reared. They were indeed secretly relieved that he made no reference to religion, nor seemed to expect them to go to the old chapel, nor even noted the Sundayness of the dishes that Martha served up with the same careful everyday air with which Caleb consumed them. They were equally relieved, however, that he did not go out rabbiting on the holy day with his new pet ferrets. “Oi’ve known some as dedn’t consider that work,” said Caleb, as they discussed this dread possibility. “But to my thinkin’, if ye goo out with a spade, ye might as well be ploughin’.”

That was what they said in bed on the first Saturday night. Very different was their conversation on the eve of the next Sunday. The problems all came now from Will’s over-interest in religion. True, the Sabbatarian peril had not yet materialized: he had neither worn his best clothes on the Saturday nor demanded priority in the Sabbath dishes. But he had dropped more than one perturbing remark. Old Quarles, he supposed, was now too old to worship at his Wesleyan Chapel in Long Bradmarsh, to which Caleb had replied naÏvely: “Ay, he sleeps at home Sunday mornings.” Presumably, then, Jinny would not leave the old man alone on Sunday as well as on Tuesday and Friday: to which Caleb had answered cautiously—and without admitting that his observations were not up to date—that doubtless Jinny could only worship occasionally with the Peculiars and it depended on her getting a lift, Methusalem being a strict Sunday observer. Yes, he had heard Farmer Gale sometimes gave her a lift—who had told Willie? he wondered—but he supposed it was because the farmer, like her grandfather, was a Wesleyan. Later, Will had remarked casually to his mother that he didn’t suppose Miss Quarles would be able to get to chapel on the morrow, as he had happened on her old grandfather, who seemed quite breaking up. Martha, murmuring sympathetically that Mr. Quarles must be getting old, was likewise compelled to gloss over her inacquaintance with Jinny’s latest Sunday habits: she shocked and surprised herself by remarking that one’s grandfather would hardly count against Farmer Gale, and hastened to add—especially as Will seemed shocked too—that such was Jinny’s devotion to her grandfather that not for some years had she been able to stay longer than the Morning Service. Rejoiced though the old woman was at Will’s mingled concern for the religion of the young and the weal of the old, she was a little uneasy at this personal turn of his theological thinking, and she quickly changed the conversation to the Great Horn and the Beast, a discussion which in her eagerness she hardly noticed was practically a monologue.

By nightfall that Saturday Caleb had gathered, with a sinking of the heart, that Will designed to accompany his elders on the morrow—and to Early Service! The boy had apparently failed to remark the breach in the old chapel routine the previous Sabbath: the Sunday had been hushed up only too successfully. It was as far as Caleb dared go, in the first plunge of confession, to say that, in the absence of a vehicle, Early Service at Chipstone was out of the question nowadays.

Such was the situation that faced the old couple in the sleepless watches of the second Saturday night, and dimmed even Martha’s joy in the prodigal’s return to religion.

“Best go with him, like when he was little,” she decided. “We mustn’t unsettle him so soon, now he’s found God again.”

“Ain’t so sure he’s found God,” said Caleb shrewdly. “God ain’t in a goose-quill, and writin’ a piece about Daniel ain’t the road to heaven, else where would me and most o’ the Brethren be? To my thinkin’ Will’s onny lost the Devil.”

“It’s the same thing. What else does he want to go to chapel for, and Early Service at that?”

“To make trouble,” said Caleb fretfully. “We was all so happy till he come—and you had Maria.”

“Oh, Caleb, you don’t deserve the Lord should give him back to you! And if you don’t go to-morrow, I’ll withdraw from you.”

“That ain’t right,” said poor Caleb, puzzled by the unscrupulous threat. “But ef it’s onny for Morning Sarvice he’ll expect you to goo too.”

“He knows about my rheumatics, dear heart,” she said casuistically. “He knows I couldn’t walk even to get my bonnet cleaned.”

“But ef you were to tell him about the New Jerusalem——?”

“He’d best find that himself, now he’s on the way. It’s not far from Daniel.”