"And what good is heather, I'd like to know?" quoth the practical miller. "It will make a broom to sweep my floors with, but what else can you do with it? There's one other thing that grows well hereabouts, though; one of my fields is as full as it will hold of parsley, and I can't make it out. Never a bit of parsley-seed have I sown; yet up it comes as if the seed had been raining from the sky." Griff chuckled, and his host glanced at him inquiringly. "Hares are very fond of parsley; wonderfully fond," murmured the younger man, with a sly look in his eyes. "Well, so they are. Only last night I was looking out of my bedroom window, and I counted five all at once in the field. But that doesn't help me to know how the parsley came there." "It _is_ curious," said Griff. But he hinted never a word of the old-time nights when he and Jack o' Ling Crag had gone out salting their neighbours' fields with parsley-seed. They rambled on from this topic to that, till they were startled by a mighty sob that came from across the hearth. Gabriel Hirst, wrapped all this while in his own miserable thoughts, had instinctively given vent to the despair at his heart. "Nay, nay, lad," said the miller, kindly. "You're overwrought a bit. Take a drop of strong drink, and you'll see the world in a better light." He got up from his armchair, and poured out a tolerable measure of the spirit, never stopping to think that his goodwill might be misdirected. The preacher took the glass from his hands. "I wouldn't, if I were you, old fellow," interposed Lomax; "you're not used to it, and----" But a devil had come into Gabriel's eyes. "I'll go my own way," he said sullenly, and swallowed the tumblerful in three big gulps. They said good night to the miller soon after--it was past eleven--and the preacher's step was uneven as he left the room. The mill stream was dancing with the moonbeams through Hazel Dene, but Gabriel was in no humour to mark such trivial beauty. He stopped when they reached the little pool with the pine-log on its bank. He gripped Lomax's arm and gazed into his face. "She was mine that day, Griff Lomax. I wish to God I'd never brought you here, to spoil a blessed Sabbath's work." "Man, you're a fool. Come home to bed, before you pick a quarrel with some one who is _not_ your friend." "Friend? Yes, and a pretty friend you've shown yourself." A hiccough had intruded itself into the preacher's voice, as the fresh air made headway with the whisky. He laughed like a madman, and sat himself down heavily on the log. "The flesh, the flesh, the flesh!" he yelled, with a hiccough between each word. Then he fell to crooning like a child; he tucked his sable legs under him, and swore that the preacher was topping the rise on the opposite side of the stream. Finally, he rose from his seat, and regarded the other with grave inquiry. "Why does the stream want to get to the sea?" he demanded. "The ways of the Lord are surely strange?"