“I suppose I can keep it while to-morrow?” he said, making a movement of his hand towards his pocket. An extraordinary agitation became apparent in Pim o’ Cuddy’s face, and his voice faltered. “Sich wark belongs to th’ Devil, ’at I’ve put at th’ back o’ me, John,” he said uneasily, and Cole the clogger winked at the goîtred fuller. “To be sure it does, Pim,” he said solemnly. “For an extra sixpence, who’d loss th’ ease o’ his conscience? Give it him back, John, and don’t tempt him. Sixpence? Nay, it might naughbut be fourpence. Give it him back.” “He hasn’t asked for it yet,” said Raikes, grinning; and Pim o’ Cuddy, in his misery, reckoned up that probably other couples would get married; that a few weddings would soon make the difference of another crown; that after all, he had no precise knowledge of what John Raikes would do with the coin.... “Here, tak’ it,” said John, grinning again; and involuntarily Pim made a gesture of refusal. “Nay, John--” he stammered, “if ye want a crown while to-morrow--for some godly purpose--it isn’t neighbourly to refuse it--but al’ays tak’ heed to your steps, John!... Now I’ve wondered many a time if a sixpence wad go down th’ spout o’ that little brass kettle o’ mine o’ th’ chimley-piece--I think a sixpence wad a’most go down....” The magpie joined in the roar of laughter with a shrill cackle. Another couple (at the parson’s urgent request) had the spurrins read; and the event that shortly followed coming to Cole’s ears, the clogger made as much of it (while all who heard him writhed in fits and convulsions of laughter) as if in the mere ceremony and solemnization of a union there lay some miraculous virtue and speed and efficacy. Again Pim o’ Cuddy temporised with the Adam within him, and again it was suggested by John Raikes that in order to introduce a sixpence into the brass kettle it was not necessary to remove the lid. And then, nobody volunteering for a full week to put a third crown into his pocket, Pim himself began to experience qualms lest his own marriage, a score of years ago, should not have been regularly blessed and sanctioned. “I doubt if him ’at wed us were ever right ordained a parson,” he said, troubled in spirit: “I ha’ it on my mind he were no better nor one o’ these broomstick chaps--and th’ wife can’t think on----” “I should wed a fresh ’un next time,” they advised him. “Don’t mak’ droll wi’ holy things,” Pim adjured them. “I feel as if I couldn’t live another day wi’out making sure----” And on the following Sunday he hung his head, shamefast, in the clerk’s desk, while the parson, at the other end of the church, required of those who knew of any impediment why Pim o’ Cuddy and the woman called Mrs. Pim o’ Cuddy should not be joined in matrimony that they should declare the same. The parson was past niceties now. After that, half the village flocked to be married.