And still the old love was the new. Still the moor reached out a lover's arms to Griff, and held him close to her breast. He was a moor man again. CHAPTER II. THE PERVERSION OF GABRIEL HIRST. A mile and a half due west of Marshcotes, on the highroad that takes you straight to the Lancashire border, lies another village--little more than an overgrown hamlet it is--which is just as compact as its neighbour is straggling. Marshcotes runs down one hill and up another, branching off into queer little streets on the way: but Ling Crag stands square to the moor-top winds, and gets a sight of the sun long after the shelter-seeking Marshcotes houses are greying with twilight. To this day they are a people to themselves, the villagers of Ling Crag, and, though you come but a league's distance from their boundaries, they account you a foreigner. Slow to speak well of a neighbour, and quick to help him in need; keen as can be when a bargain is toward; more respectful to their conceptions of tangible, everyday duty than to class distinctions; assured, beyond reach of doubt or argument, that their village is the hub of the universe--of such sort are the people of Ling Crag. A generation or two ago, however, they were a rougher folk than now, leading rougher lives. A soul-searching, hell-fearing Methodism was the dominant note of their existence; and Methodism has ever since been a vital force with them, though it has changed with the change it has wrought in the people. With their rugged strength, their fearlessness of purpose, it was only natural that religion, when first it came into the midst of their wild, strenuous lives, should fit itself in a measure to the soil. They were harsh by example of the winds and the storms that had reared them, generation after generation, and the religion that sought to teach them must also be harsh in its precepts. So their preachers went in and out, and spoke the language of the folk they had to deal with, and led them, little by little, into the quieter places of charity and long-suffering. But Ling Crag was young to religion then, and fear was the larger part of their faith. They were much addicted to superstition, too, these upland folk; and when they sinned, they sinned with groanings of the spirit and retrospective shakings of the head at the old Adam who was responsible for it all.