The company at ’The Corner House’ had divided into two groups, and each was concerned with a separate subject. Mr. Shillabeer himself, with Bartley Crocker, Mr. Moses, Simon Snell, and Bart Stanbury, discussed a strange phenomenon that had of late startled the dwellers at Sheepstor; while, with their backs to this throng, Ernest Maunder, his friend Timothy Mattacott, and Billy Screech whispered together upon a private problem. "The thing can be explained in a word," said Moses; "there be amongst us some high-minded, religious creature that have got hold of this way of advertising the Truth. He have said to himself, ’There’s nought like a gate to catch the eye of the passer-by.’ And so, where a gate happens to stand by the wayside, he have gone by night and painted up a Bible truth. Farmer Chave found ’_Prepare to meet thy God_’ on his bullock byre yesterday morning, and there’s ’Eternity’--just that one solemn word--on every second gate betwixt here and Meavy." "He’s come out our way, too, since last week," said Bart Stanbury. "There be a text up over on the moor-gate above our house: ’_Now is the accepted time_.’" Young Stanbury was courting a girl at Nosworthy Farm, near his home, and this text, staring out of the dawn-lit desert, had come to him with the force of a direct command. But he made no mention of its private significance in his affairs. "The party means well enough," declared Hartley. "There’s no doubt about that. And it can’t be denied that coming upon these solemn things all of a sudden makes men and women think. The puzzle is to know who’s doing it." "Some of the people that own the gates don’t like it, however," said Simon Snell. "Farmer Bassett, out to Yellowmead, says ’tis a form of trespass and battery to write on a man’s gatepost; and it don’t bring you any more within the law because you write up Scripture. The man stuck up ’_Let there be light_’ on Mr. Bassett’s big gate--the one going into his four-acre field--and Bassett was cruel vexed and said as how he’d let light into the chap himself if ever he caught him." "And he’s cleaned his gate with sand-paper," added young Stanbury. "’Tis written on again since then," said Mr. Shillabeer. "I was that way not long since, and there’s words written there again--namely, ’God is Love.’" "Strange thing is that Ernest Maunder on his nightly rounds should have never catched the man," mused Crocker. "Not at all," explained Mr. Moses. "The man no doubt knows the way of Ernest’s beat as well as Ernest himself do, and avoids him. They were saying yesterday that it might even be parson’s self; but of course that’s a rash and silly idea. His reverence is as much interested in it as anybody--especially since he found ’_The Lord loveth a cheerful giver_’ on his own back-garden door--the one that leadeth out into the lane. He holds that the man means well; all the same, he wants him catched and stopped."