Greta Rotherson, when the preacher disappeared at the corner of the wood, had laughed a little, and frowned a good deal, and had finally put on her stockings and boots. "I wish he had never come," she cried. "It is such a quiet nook, and no one has disturbed me before. I like Gabriel Hirst, though, for all his hardness and his dangling of hell before poor old father's eyes. _Hardness?_" She laughed again at that, softly and musically; for she remembered how the preacher had looked at her a few minutes ago. "He only wants taking in hand by--by a woman who isn't afraid; he's not a fool at the bottom of him." Then she tossed her hair back from her forehead and went briskly up the wooded cleft of the hills, until she reached a weather-stained corn-mill. The great wooden wheel was creaking intermittently on its axle, as if the jar and fret of work-a-day motion were more to its liking than this enforced Sabbath rest. Old Rotherson, the miller, with his iron-grey hair and shrewd, clean-shaven face, was smoking a churchwarden pipe at his door; the bees had deserted the heather once more in favour of his bit of a garden, and a peacock-butterfly was sunning itself on the house wall. It was hard to believe that the Storm-God had his temple so near to this sheltered cranny of the moors. "Well, Greta, lass, have you paddled to your heart's content?" cried the old man, as his daughter came in sight. "Yes, father--and a little more. Gabriel Hirst came down the hillside before I had finished, and he would stop to talk. I had to sit on a log with my legs tucked up under me, and I nearly got cramp before I rid myself of him." The miller chuckled quietly to his churchwarden. "He'd never have noticed, child, so you might have spared yourself the trouble. Was he as sour as ever?" Greta turned her head to watch the peacock butterfly on the wall. Her dimpled cheeks grew rosy. "Not quite, father. He wanted to know if he could come to see us." "Lass, lass, I wish folks would let a man's soul alone. What did you say?" groaned the miller. "That we were proof against conversion, and sick of it. That he might come as a friend if he cared to, and we'd give him a hearty welcome." "Good, good!" muttered the old man, approvingly. "But I doubt him, Greta; he'll never be able to keep his tongue off that subject for long." "Well, we shall see. There's Nancy, father, coming to tell us that dinner is ready. I'm ready, too; put down your pipe, dear."