The preacher was tired and disposed to seek sympathy. The aptness of Mother Strangeways' questions seemed to call for straightforward answers. He told her what he had seen in Hazel Dene. The woman's face ran into queer wrinkles as she listened; it seemed that her prayers had brought to Sorrowstones Spring a man well fitted to compass what was now her one aim in life. "It's i' th' breed; it's a trick of his father's, yon. He'll hev his way wi' th' lass, an' then he'll leave her i' th' mud, to fend for herseln an' th' babby," she muttered eagerly. The preacher rose, his face on fire. "Woman!" he cried, "if you frame your unclean lips to such words again, I'll----" "Nay, nay, lad. It's noan me 'at wants to hurt thee. Tak a bit o' that sperrit wi' thee when next tha wends to Griff Lummax.--Summat to eat, sayst 'a? Ay, an' gladly, though I'd hev seen thee starve on th' doorstun if tha'd been a friend o' Lummax's." Gabriel's fire went out; there was no bodily fuel to keep it going. He ate of the coarse stuff that was set before him, and drank of Mother Strangeways' rum. She watched him from under her white eyelashes. "Vengeance is th' Lord's, tha says?" she muttered. "Happen it is, if tha taks th' thing far enow back. But this I tell thee, Gabriel Hirst, th' Lord 'ull damn thee for a fooil if tha waits for Him to help thee. Dost think summat is bahn to shooit out on th' sky an' strike this Lummax deäd? I thowt that myseln, lad, for a while; but now I know 'at just as mich as a man fends for hisseln, so mich will th' Lord fend for him. It's share an' share alike wi' wark o' yon kind, an' tha cannot look to get all an' do nowt." Gabriel muttered incoherently to himself, and Rachel Strangeways thought that a new intensity of purpose was gripping him. "If tha's getten a doubt i' thy heäd still, tha can mind what Griff Lummax did to my Joe's wife. He telled thee he war innocent as a sucking lamb, likely. Well, a man that 'ull do one kind o' dirty wark 'ull do another. What's a two or three lies when a Lummax hes owt to gain by telling 'em? An' now he's tired o' th' wench, an' off he goes speering after thy sweetheart. It's th' talk o' th' moorside; tha mun be daft to sit so long wi' thy hands i' thy lap." Gabriel Hirst, in the simplicity of his nature, was always apt to fall into the delusion that, if any one prefaced a statement by a generous exposure of some other person's falsity, then the statement in question became at least doubled in value. It was easy just now to attribute dishonesty to Griff, and Griff's accuser shone by the contrast in the light of a rigid truth-teller. He pushed his empty plate from him and leaned his head on his arms. "Well, tha's etten enow, seemingly," croaked the witch; "put thy mouth to th' bottle again, an' off tha wends to Griff Lummax, to settle thy scores like a man."