"There's a deal o comfort i' listening to the likes o' yon," he had said, in his tone of grudging praise. "Ye could see by th' face on him 'at t' Sperrit war moving him, an' proper. There's not a mony like Gabriel hereabouts." "He can preach, can th' lad, an' there's no denying it," spoke up a tall, spare man on the outskirts of the group. "But's he's ower young, to my thinking, to ponder so mich on th' dark side o' this world an' th' next, an' niver gie us a taste o' th' gooid there is about. He mud be softer by th' half, an' niver be th' war for't." Old Binns screwed up his mouth a shade tighter. "We're hard folk up here, Ebenezer, an' softness is nowt i' our way." "Hard folk we be, an' all th' more call there is for a bit o' softness now an' again. If religion warn't gi'en us to soften our hearts, what mak o' use is't, Jose Binns?" "Ay, ay, tha'rt right there," chimed in another voice. "Ye mark my words, lads. I'm fourscore year an' ower, an' I've seen what I've seen, an' I tell ye, there'll a day come when all this shutting up o' th' gooid side o' human natur--fair as if 'twere summat to be shamed on--'ull pass away for gooid an' all. Ye willun't listen to th' preachers 'at wants to leäd instead o' frightening ye, though we've a mony as 'ud be glad for ye to hear 'em. Ye mun ha' nowt but judgment an' wrath, an' ye willun't bide owt softer. What do Gabriel Hirst know o' th' better side o' things? He's nobbut a kittling yet, as hes niver known th' love of a woman." "Shame on thee, shame on thee!" growled Jose Binns. "An old man like thee to be talking o' love an' sich-like lightness, when a man o' God has just been telling thee to shun th' sinful flesh an' all its warks. Dost call thyseln a Methodist?" "Ay, lad; I call myseln a Methodist, an' there's nowt i' th' doctrine what forbids a man to see th' gooid i' hisseln as well as th' bad. Thee bide till th' little pracher hes getten his hand round th' heft of a straight love for a woman--they're th' best that God has gi'en us, is women, when all's said--an' tha'll find his praching summat godlier, like, nor it hes been." "Women!" said Jose Binns, turning down the corners of his wry old mouth. "Women's better nor th' men, ony way," put in Mrs. Binns, sharply. "An' what call hast tha, Jose, to go making fooil's faces at thy own wedded wife? I've a mind to dress thy jacket for thee, that I hev." Old Binns retreated into the background a little; he no longer felt a prophet in his own country. And a laugh went up from the group, and they fell to talking of this and that, in a hushed, Sabbath fashion.