Now, Nathan Blyth and his daughter were quite persuaded that the rough and cruel treatment which they had received was the result of the malice and jealousy of Black Morris. So far they were right; at the same time it is fair to him to say that he was innocent of this crowning outrage. The fact is, that in his first fierce and unrestrained paroxysm of vexation he had enlisted his alehouse chums in his wicked crusade of vengeance; and in the hope of more fully winning him over to their bad confederacy, and partly out of sheer love of mischief, they had espoused his cause with an energy that surpassed all that in his cooler moments he desired to inflict. His disreputable cronies enjoyed the surreptitious “fun” of “taking a rise” out of “Parson Blyth,” as they called him; their horse-play grew on what it fed on, and hence the shameful extremes I have had to chronicle. The gunpowder was secreted by Bill Buckley, a beetle-browed rascal, with whom we shall have to make a closer acquaintance by and bye. He inserted it in the nozzle of the smithy bellows not only without Black Morris’s permission, but utterly without his knowledge, and so far, although it grew out of his conduct, he must be acquitted of so vile and cowardly a deed. It is far easier to set the ball rolling down hill than to stop it on its course; and spirits like those which he had called from the vasty deep to serve his purpose, were not to be laid again, without doing a little extra devilry on their own account. When Black Morris heard of Nathan Blyth’s misfortune he was not only genuinely sorry, but, suspecting it was some of his set who had done it, he went off straightway into a frenzy of rage against them, altogether as hot as that which had been directed against Nathan Blyth himself. This man was an oddity, and it took all the power and subtlety of the devil to spoil him--whether he succeeded remains to be seen. After Nathan’s recovery he had returned to his old post at the anvil, and had tuned up again as merrily as ever, for the gunpowder wasn’t manufactured which could blow his “sing” out of him, without dislodging either his tongue or his life. In fact he was one of the Mark Tapley genius with a higher inspiration, and his spirits always seemed to rise towards boiling point as his surroundings sank towards zero. Nathan was fashioning harrow teeth, and the quick rap-tap of his hammer on the heated iron bar kept capital time to his song: Oh, Love is a clever magician; His rod is a conjuror’s wand; And this is his heavenly mission-- To bind in his magical band The hearts of all men to each other In amity, friendship, and peace, That each may to each be a brother, And hatred and envy may cease.