Nevertheless the dismay of the Congregationalists, of whose community Mother Gander was a fallen pillar, was not counter-poised in jubilation by the Brethren. For if a stronghold had been captured, the devil had not been dispossessed. Mother Gander doffed her gold chain, but Sister Gander gave no sign of emptying her liquor into the gutters, and to be proud of a convert against whose establishment you have to admonish one another is not simple. The Peculiars managed it, however, after some heart-searching. It was true old Bundock had been wont to make great play with Banyard’s declaration—universally admired as a gem of humour—“If you want to get me to a public-house, you’ll have to take a horse and hook me.” But after all, Elder Mawhood pointed out, “The Black Sheep” was far more than a public-house: as the headquarters for the mail-coach it was part of the constitution of the country, and it was better for the farmers to eat their ordinary under a God-fearing roof—even if they would drink with it—than for the profits of their custom to go to a rival house which would contribute no farthing to the Brethren’s treasury. It was Brother Flynt, however, who supplied the finest soothing-powder. “Oi used to condemn myself,” he said, “but ’twasn’t no good. You _must_ drink when you’re harvestin’. Don’t, you’ll be drippin’ as you goo.” If he did not drink now that his harvesting days were over, that did not prove other drinkers were wicked. You had to consider circumstances. And playing the Sancho Panza still more unexpectedly, he hinted that there was such a thing as over-zeal. “They used to call me a Banyard as a revilin’ word, them as made fun of us, but to tell the truth Oi’ve never got out o’ my warm bed in the middle o’ the noight to pray as he exhorted—leastways, not in winter. We’ve got to be thankful for Sister Gander, and not expect her to goo all the way at the start. She don’t want to lose her business as well as her husband.” But it appeared that Mother Gander did not want to go without a husband either. She suddenly, and before her year of mourning was up, married Charley Mott, the aforesaid potboy, not half her age, and this was a fresh upset for the Brethren, modified only by the conversion of Charley. The Congregationalists took the opportunity to give the couple “rough music,” and the whole neighbourhood joined in with kettles and pokers. Brother Bundock from his omniscient bed at first proclaimed the scandal as a divine chastisement on his Brethren for having failed to “admonish” her to give up purveying “beer and ’bacca”—he himself would have dared it, he declared without fear of contradiction, had he only had his legs—but finally, when the storm blew over, he would relate with gusto how she had weathered it.