But the May sun was shining bravely as he drove to Heathley at three of the following afternoon, and loyalty to Griff seemed just part and parcel of the quickening landscape. Step by step with the loyalty ran that unalterable egoism of the preacher's. If he could feel himself singled out, now for Divine wrath, now for commendation at the Deity's hands, how much easier was it for him to believe that Marshcotes and Ling Crag set great store by his example? They knew him, all these villagers who had been shaken by the scandal in their midst; they saw in him a resolute and a God-fearing man, one whose opinion on a point of morals was worth the having; how could it fail to make Griff's road the smoother for him if he, Gabriel Hirst, ostentatiously went forward to greet him on his arrival? Perhaps, then, it was almost a disappointment to Gabriel when he reached Heathley and discovered that certain daring minds had chosen to act on their own initiative. The good coach "Airedale" ran from Landford to Heathley in those days, and it had been noised abroad among those who knew Lomax that he and his wife would reach the Spotted Heifer at two of the afternoon. The preacher found the inn-yard black with chattering groups of Marshcotes folk, gathered from widely different sections of the community. Some had walked to Heathley, others had come by omnibus; all, by the look of their faces, were prepared to give young Lomax as hearty a greeting as he could wish for. The same impulse which had moved the preacher to side with the weaker cause was not likely to leave unmoved others of these sturdy dwellers on the moors. The weak, the irresolute and the ultra-pious were dead against Griff and his wife; they forgot old likings, and remembered only what had been proved up to the hilt in a court of law. And this attitude had roused the more independent men and women; they brought to mind the fact that no one in Marshcotes had had a word to say against Griff until this trouble came; none could urge that the lad's treatment of Kate was simply a corollary of previous conduct of his; but plenty of people were mindful of the open-handed way in which Griff and his mother had gone in and out among their neighbours. Before the trouble with Strangeway's wife, indeed, there had been a remarkable unanimity in the mind of the countryside as to the Lomaxes. Some were wont to style Griff "a raffle-coppin," meaning thereby a kind of ne'er-do-weel whom everybody loved; but that was the worst name you were likely to hear attached to him through the length and breadth of Marshcotes parish. And though they had their faults--these upland folk--forgetfulness of old friendships was not among their vices.