Mr. Bayley, on the other hand, had found a new pleasure in his visits to the farm-since Miss Fountain's arrival. The young lady had escaped indeed from the evil thing--so as by fire. But she was far too pale and thin; she showed too many regrets. Moreover she was not willing to talk of Mr. Helbeck with his enemies. Indeed, she turned her back rigorously on any attempt to make her do so. So all that was left to the two cronies was to sit night after night, talking to each other in the hot hope that Miss Fountain might be reached thereby and strengthened--that even Mrs. Fountain and that distant black brood of Bannisdale might in some indirect way be brought within the saving-power of the Gospel. Strange fragments of this talk floated through the kitchen.-- "Oh, my dear friend!--forbidding to marry is a doctrine of _devils_!--Now Lima, as I have often told you, is a city of convents----" There was a sudden grinding of chairs on the flagged floor. The grey head and the red approached each other; the nightly shudder began; while the girls chattered and coughed as loudly as they dared. "No--a woan't--a conno believe 't!" Mrs. Mason would say at last, throwing herself back against her chair with very red cheeks. And Daffady would look round furtively, trying to hear. But sometimes the curate would try to propitiate the young ladies. He made himself gentle; he raised the most delicate difficulties. He had, for instance, a very strange compassion for the Saints. "I hold it," he said--with an eye on Miss Fountain--"to be clearly demonstrable that the Invocation of Saints is, of all things, most lamentably injurious to the Saints themselves!" "Hoo can he knaw?" said Polly to Laura, open-mouthed. But Mrs. Mason frowned. "A doan't hod wi Saints whativer," she said violently. "So A doan't fash mysel aboot em!" Daffady sometimes would be drawn into these diversions, as he sat smoking on the settle. And then out of a natural slyness--perhaps on these latter occasions, from a secret sympathy for "missie"--he would often devote himself to proving the solidarity of all "church priests," Establishments, and prelatical Christians generally. Father Bowles might be in a "parlish" state; but as to all supporters of bishops and the heathenish custom of fixed prayers--whether they wore black gowns or no--"a man mut hae his doots." Never had Daffady been so successful with his shafts as on this particular evening. Mrs. Mason grew redder and redder; her large face alternately flamed and darkened in the firelight. In the middle the girls tried to escape into the parlour. But she shouted imperiously after them. "Polly--Laura--what art tha aboot? Coom back at yance. I'll not ha sickly foak sittin wi'oot a fire!" They came back sheepishly. And when they were once more settled as audience, the mistress--who was by this time fanning herself tempestuously with the Whinthorpe paper--launched her last word: