Only Martha, going down in state to order the usual gross of matches at the village shop--the carriage arrangements precluded their purchase with all other things at the Stores--fell foul of the whole business, lock and stock and barrel, to Isaac Edwards, whom she found singing hymns while he did up the pound package of sugar, in which the paper, heavy blue, was included in the weight. Not that it was his fault that this was so. It was only one of the usual tricks of a trade which on a small scale cannot possibly be run straight. "You'll excuse me," she said with a sniff, "but it strikes me as you're all a deal too free with the Almighty. But there, once folk stops making their reverences to the gentry, 'tain't long ere they get to noddin' at their Creator. An' you don't go to the Bible for your crowded-up night-watches, Mr. Edwards. King David, an' he oughter know, says mornin', evenin', an' noon. At night 'e watered 'is bed with 'is tears an' was still, like a decent gentleman. There wasn't none of this not-comin'-home--till--mornin' business, and how folks as 'as to work hard for their livin' does it, beats me. I'll set up agin most, but I'm a pore piece next day, an' wouldn't ask a full wage of anybody, not I! And as for the young folk; you mark my words, Mr. Edwards! Gels is gels, an' boys is boys, whether they stands in a kirk or a mill, as the sayin' is. An' they'll find it out for theirselves, poor sillies, by an' by, if them as is past 'youth's hayday' don't harvest-home 'em before lights out. So there! An' you can send up a gross an' a half o' matches if you think that not bein' o' your way o' believin' I shall 'ave to 'arden myself to brimstone." So she had departed; but her warnings had been as chaff before the wind while the harvest was being gathered in. The flood-tide of popular opinion lifted even the wildest extravagances as well as the most sober actuality and carried them with it. Whither remained to be seen. And now? Morris Pugh, standing at the window looking in dull amaze at the star which had by this time dissociated itself entirely from earth, could not think what would happen now. Everything on which he had any grip seemed to have gone. Since that day, a long month ago, when his voice had failed before Gwen's voice, he had, like the star, dissociated himself from the material world altogether. He had given the rein to his emotions, he had lived in the clouds, never asking or thinking how Alicia and Gwen came to be dressed so becomingly, never inquiring how the expenses of railway tickets, hiring, placarding, advertisements, notices in the papers, all the thousand and one absolute necessities for a successful meeting, were defrayed. So the truth came upon him with deadly force. Morally a far stronger man than his brother, he could not for the moment get beyond the actual fact of fraud. How could Mervyn have taken the money? How could he?