He made no answer, but taking up his tongs caught with it from a beam one of a number of roughly-finished horse-shoes which hung there, and put it on the fire to be fashioned to a certain fit. While he turned it in the fire, and blew the bellows, I stood regarding him. “This man will do for my work,” I said to myself; “though I should not wonder from the look of him if it was the last piece of work he ever did under the New Jerusalem.” The smith’s words broke in on my meditations. “When I was a little boy,” he said, “I once wanted to stay at home from school. I had, I believe, a little headache, but nothing worth minding. I told my mother that I had a headache, and she kept me, and I helped her at her spinning, which was what I liked best of anything. But in the afternoon the Methodist preacher came in to see my mother, and he asked me what was the matter with me, and my mother answered for me that I had a bad head, and he looked at me; and as my head was quite well by this time, I could not help feeling guilty. And he saw my look, I suppose, sir, for I can’t account for what he said any other way; and he turned to me, and he said to me, solemn-like, ‘Is your head bad enough to send you to the Lord Jesus to make you whole?’ I could not speak a word, partly from bashfulness, I suppose, for I was but ten years old. So he followed it up, as they say: ‘Then you ought to be at school,’ says he. I said nothing, because I couldn’t. But never since then have I given in as long as I could stand. And I can stand now, and lift my hammer, too,” he said, as he took the horse-shoe from the forge, laid it on the anvil, and again made a nimbus of coruscating iron. “You are just the man I want,” I said. “I’ve got a job for you, down to Kilkhaven, as you say in these parts.” “What is it, sir? Something about the church? I should ha’ thought the church was all spick and span by this time.” “I see you know who I am,” I said. “Of course I do,” he answered. “I don’t go to church myself, being brought up a Methodist; but anything that happens in the parish is known the next day all over it.” “You won’t mind doing my job though you are a Methodist, will you?” I asked. “Not I, sir. If I’ve read right, it’s the fault of the Church that we don’t pull all alongside. You turned us out, sir; we didn’t go out of ourselves. At least, if all they say is true, which I can’t be sure of, you know, in this world.” “You are quite right there though,” I answered. “And in doing so, the Church had the worst of it--as all that judge and punish their neighbours have. But you have been the worse for it, too: all of which is to be laid to the charge of the Church. For there is not one clergyman I know--mind, I say, that I know--who would have made such a cruel speech to a boy as that the Methodist parson made to you.” “But it did me good, sir?”