The parson of Wadsworth, too, had his cross to bear, and he reddened when, meeting Captain Ritchie one day in Horwick, the captain looked straight through him, ignoring his existence. Explanation was impossible; the matter must be let go at that; and for long afterwards that hot blush mounted into the parson’s cheek, often at inopportune moments. So, the horse being gone, he locked the stable door to save the harness; and the vows of amends that his praying presently gave him strength to make he kept as well as, or, maybe, a trifle better than, most of us. Then one fine day it suddenly occurred to him that he was getting rather sentimentally fond of his delinquency and making quite the most of it. “Hallo,” he thought, “this’ll never do!” and a laugh shook him.--“A good thing too!” he declared roundly. “The fellow was a man, anyway, and his wife a treasure, and I’d do it again rather than he should be stretched!” There was very little hope of the parson after that. Such parts of Back o’ th’ Mooin as had been heather were a sad sight for long enough to come. The fire burned here and there for a fortnight, and then there came a light shower or two that set the hills a-steam with opaque white smoke. For days after the apparent extinction of the blaze, you could, by stamping your foot on the consumed patches, set sparks glowing and little flames flickering; and then all died down. It had swept clear over the Slack to the Causeway, and there its progress had only been arrested by the tearing up of stretches of heather, in which work both soldiers and Back o’ th’ Mooiners had joined.--But a good deal of heather has grown on the hills since then, and Back o’ th’ Mooin is not very different to look at. In the villages they gradually returned to the weaving of kerseys and shalloons, and some hold that the saw, “Three great ills come out o’ the north-- A cold wind, a cunning knave, and a shrinking cloth” had its rise somewhere between Horwick Town and Trawden Edge.