The smith was willing enough, for he was hard-pressed, and the fame of the Reverend Mr. Sumption had spread far beyond the country of the Four Roads. The strength of his great arms, his resource, his knowledge, his experience of all smithwork, made him an even more valuable assistant than the man who had gone. There was a market that day at Chiddingly, which meant more work than usual, including several wheelwright’s jobs, which the smith performed himself, leaving the horses to Mr. Sumption. The furnace roared as the bellows gasped, and lit up all the sag-roofed forge, with the dark shapes of men and horses standing round, and the minister holding down the red-hot iron among the coals or beating it on the anvil, while his sweating skin was shiny and crimson in the glow. It was like his dream of the forge at Bethersden—and he felt almost happy. The glow of his body seemed to reach his heart and warm it, and his head was no longer full of doubts like stones. He had found a refuge here, as he had found it in old days in Mus’ Bourner’s forge at Sunday Street—the heat, the roar, the flying sparks, the shaking crimson light, the smell of sweat and hoofs and horse-hide, the pleasant ache of labour in his limbs, were all part of the healing which had begun when he rubbed his cheek against the wet soil on the common. His religion had always taught him to look on his big friendly body as his enemy, to subdue and thwart and ignore it. He had not known till then how much it was his friend, and that there is such a thing as the Redemption of the Body, the mystic act through which the body saves and redeems the soul. He worked on till the sun grew pale, and a tremulous primrose light crept over the fields of Lion’s Green, swamping the trees and hedges and grazing cows. The afternoon was passing into the evening, and Mr. Sumption knew he must start at once if he was to be home that day. “Well, I’m middling sorry to lose you,” said the smith. “A man lik you’s wasted preaching the Gospel.” “Reckon I shan’t do much more of that,” said Mr. Sumption wryly. “I can’t go back to my Bethel, after what’s happened.” “Well, if ever you feel you’d lik to turn blacksmith fur a change——” the smith remarked, with a grin. “I shall go into the Army Veterinary Corps,” said Mr. Sumption. “Wot! Lik my man?” “Like the man I was meant to be. I agree with you, master—I’m wasted preaching the Gospel. I’d be better as a veterinary ... I’ve been thinking....” 15 There was a farmer driving as far as Adam’s Hole on the Hailsham Road, and he offered Mr. Sumption a lift in his trap. The minister had shod his little sorrel mare, and with her hoofs ringing on the clinkered road they drove from Lion’s Green, away towards the east. The dipping sun poured upon their backs, flooding the lane and washing along their shadows ahead of them into the swale. The east was still bright, and out of it crept the moon, frail and papery, like the petal of a March flower.