It was a matter of surprise to the villagers that their preacher should be so given to "fits and starts." One Sunday he would rain brimstone from the pulpit, while the next would find him tender almost to the verge of tears. "Nay, nay, I doubt it's too mich for Gabriel; he should tak hisseln off ivery other week an' rest a bit," commented a member of his following. "That's so, lad, that's so," assented Jose Binns; "he's nobbut poorly like, is th' pracher, or he'd niver gie us such pap sermons as that'n we hed yester morn. Oh, ay, he'd better tak a rest, an' that's plain to ony man 'at can see to th' end on his nose." But Greta's comments on the preacher were of a different sort. "He's such _a woman_, father," she said to Miller Rotherson one day. It was her usual remark when Gabriel had particularly angered her. "Don't be too sure, lass. I've no call to fight his battles, seeing how often he's bothered and bothered me about my soul--but this I'll say for Gabriel Hirst: he's no woman at the heart of him. Greta, I'd think shame if I was you to set so much store by the outside." "I don't like an apple with an ugly rind, however good it be inside," said Greta, crossly. "And there you make your mistake, as women-folk mostly do. Give me the ugliest-looking apple you can find, and I'll know it's worth eating." "But Gabriel isn't ugly," flashed the girl, perversely. The miller laid down his pipe, and looked quizzically at his daughter. "Has he snared thy heart, lass, this preacher fellow?" Greta tossed her head, got half-way through a denial, and ended with a storm of sobs. "There, there, Greta, don't cry," murmured Miller Rotherson, as she came to his knee and buried her head out of sight. "Supposing he _is_ too blind, this Gabriel Hirst, to know a good thing when he sees it--there are other men in the world." She lifted up her head at that and pushed back the hair from her eyes. "But not one that can come near him, father." "Well, well; I never did understand the twists and the turns of you women, and I never shall, as I told your poor mother most every day of her life. He's such a woman, sings the lass one minute, and the next----" "So he is," quoth Greta, and ran from the room to tidy herself. And all this, as has been said, bothered Griff Lomax no little. He felt like a father to these two young people, and had set his heart on their making a match of it. He was in and out of the mill a good deal; old Rotherson took kindly to him, and Greta grew to regard him in the light of a hail-fellow-well-met sort of comrade, who showed no disposition to make love, and who was yet willing to serve as a friendly basis of jealousy when the occasion demanded it.