From that day onward he began to preach; his long experience of such sort of fight lent him substance for his sermons, and his inborn strenuousness of character made an orator of him. He did not join the regular ministry, but became established as a local preacher. His fame, little by little, grew big among the congregations of such chapels as lay on the line of his quarterly circuit, till in time "Gabriel Hirst" grew to be a name to conjure with. All Marshcotes and Cranshaw, every scattered hamlet for miles around, knew Gabriel "by sight and by speech," and the Ling Crag folk were mightily proud of their preacher. Things have altered with Methodism since then, but in those days it was a matter of course that Gabriel should have a special band of admirers who would go as far even as Ludworth to hear him preach on a Sunday morning. So devoted, indeed, was the preacher's "following," that it was much as if he had a regular congregation of his own; whether he held forth in Ling Crag or Marshcotes, Ludworth or Cranshaw, always the same knot of familiars grouped themselves round the chapel doors after service, and estimated to a nicety the amount of Gabriel's recent inspiration. Indeed, when the fire of certain newly-roused passions began to drive him into the wilderness, the change might be gauged with tolerable accuracy by listening to such comments on his sermons. If a young man were reluctant to amend his ways, or a maiden showed herself over-flighty, Gabriel Hirst's sermons were the infallible remedy. He could invoke the thunders of God, and paint hell-fire, with greater vigour than any of his fellows, and even the most careless of sinners quailed before his description of the judgment in store for them. Perhaps the maidens of Ling Crag were less satisfied with the preacher than his piety warranted. He was well off, "straight set up," and had good looks of a rugged kind. Had he asked one of them to marry him, she would probably have given favourable consideration to the proposal. But Gabriel scarcely seemed to understand that they were women. They might don their best hats and infuse rough coquetry into their glances, but he was not aware of it; they were just fellow-sufferers with himself in a world whose keynote was original sin, and they gained interest in his eyes only through the effort that was necessary to keep them in the right path. Yet, underneath it all, Gabriel Hirst had the faults and the virtues of his own folk developed to their furthest extremes. The old moor blood, pagan to its last drop, was quick in his veins. Reared to the conviction that he had a "call," he strove night and day to keep the spirit working within him, strove to deaden the voice of the moor wind at his ear and the cry of remoter fathers in his heart. He was a strong man, and a passionate man, and for the five years since his first sermon he had, with an energy almost savage, forced his strength into the service of his religion.