‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘to-morrow is my field night, as you call it, farmer. I hope it may prove a harvest field.’ ‘Now, just tell me how you do it, lad,’ said the old man. ‘Do you lie awake of nights, and make up all you’re going to say, or do you wait till the people are before you, and then just tell ’em what’s in your mind? I’m curious to know, for your flow of words is wonderful, and I can’t understand how any man can talk for two mortal hours as you did last Wednesday, unless he’s stored it all up beforehand. It beats me altogether. I never heard the like before.’ He had got Hugh astride his hobby, and the young man found his tongue at once. ‘Oh, Mr Llewellyn, if you loved the people as I do, you would find it quite as easy as talking to your family at home. I do think of what I wish to say to them; sometimes the thought walks with me, as you might say, all day long; but I seldom use the words I’ve been dreaming of. I go to the spot with my mind full of some set speech, but when I see the people who wait for me--all of them old neighbours or children whom I’ve seen grow up amongst us--and most of them dear friends, I feel as if my very soul went out to meet them, yearning to gather them all safe into the fold. The words in which to warn and entreat them come too quick then to my lips for utterance, and sometimes I’ve had to swallow down my sobs before I could find a voice with which to speak. The difficulty is _not_ to speak, Mr Llewellyn. The hard part is to keep silence, when one sees so many whom one loves living for nothing but to eat and to drink, and as if there were no God in the world.’ The farmer and his wife had been regarding Hugh Owen during this speech with open-eyed amazement--Nell, with a scared look, half fear and half annoyance. ‘Eh, lad,’ said Mr Llewellyn, ‘but it’s a rare gift, and you’ve got it, there’s no doubt of that. But as for living to eat and drink, we must do it, or we shouldn’t live at all, and we do it for others as well as ourselves. What would become of my missus there, and Nell now for the matter of that, if I didn’t see after the ploughing and reaping, and wife after the dairy and the bakehouse. We’d all be dead of starvation by the end of the year if I took to preaching in the fields like you, instead of farming them.’ ‘Indeed, yes, Mr Llewellyn, you quite mistake if you think I consider it part of religion to neglect the work we have been given to do. But we can live to God and do our duty at one and the same time. It seems so difficult to me,’ continued the young enthusiast, as he flung his hair off his brow, and lifted his dark eyes to Nell’s face, ‘to live in the country, surrounded by God’s works, and _not_ remember Him. Why, a countryside like Usk is a continual church-going. Every leafy tree is a cathedral--the flowery meadows are altar carpets--each wild bird singing in its thankfulness a chorister. God’s face is reflected in the least of His works. How can we look at them and forget Him?’