prompt:
Chapter: About a quarter to seven there was an unusual appearance of excitement
in the village of Hayslope, and through the whole length of its
little street, from the Donnithorne Arms to the churchyard gate, the
inhabitants had evidently been drawn out of their houses by something
more than the pleasure of lounging in the evening sunshine. The
Donnithorne Arms stood at the entrance of the village, and a small
farmyard and stackyard which flanked it, indicating that there was a
pretty take of land attached to the inn, gave the traveller a promise
of good feed for himself and his horse, which might well console him
for the ignorance in which the weather-beaten sign left him as to the
heraldic bearings of that ancient family, the Donnithornes. Mr. Casson,
the landlord, had been for some time standing at the door with his hands
in his pockets, balancing himself on his heels and toes and looking
towards a piece of unenclosed ground, with a maple in the middle of it,
which he knew to be the destination of certain grave-looking men and
women whom he had observed passing at intervals.

Mr. Casson's person was by no means of that common type which can be
allowed to pass without description. On a front view it appeared to
consist principally of two spheres, bearing about the same relation to
each other as the earth and the moon: that is to say, the lower sphere
might be said, at a rough guess, to be thirteen times larger than the
upper which naturally performed the function of a mere satellite and
tributary. But here the resemblance ceased, for Mr. Casson's head was
not at all a melancholy-looking satellite nor was it a "spotty globe,"
as Milton has irreverently called the moon; on the contrary, no head and
face could look more sleek and healthy, and its expression--which was
chiefly confined to a pair of round and ruddy cheeks, the slight
knot and interruptions forming the nose and eyes being scarcely worth
mention--was one of jolly contentment, only tempered by that sense of
personal dignity which usually made itself felt in his attitude and
bearing. This sense of dignity could hardly be considered excessive in
a man who had been butler to "the family" for fifteen years, and who, in
his present high position, was necessarily very much in contact with
his inferiors. How to reconcile his dignity with the satisfaction of his
curiosity by walking towards the Green was the problem that Mr. Casson
had been revolving in his mind for the last five minutes; but when
he had partly solved it by taking his hands out of his pockets, and
thrusting them into the armholes of his waistcoat, by throwing his
head on one side, and providing himself with an air of contemptuous
indifference to whatever might fall under his notice, his thoughts were
diverted by the approach of the horseman whom we lately saw pausing to
have another look at our friend Adam, and who now pulled up at the door
of the Donnithorne Arms.

"Take off the bridle and give him a drink, ostler," said the traveller
to the lad in a smock-frock, who had come out of the yard at the sound
of the horse's hoofs.

"Why, what's up in your pretty village, landlord?" he continued, getting
down. "There seems to be quite a stir."

"It's a Methodis' preaching, sir; it's been gev hout as a young woman's
a-going to preach on the Green," answered Mr. Casson, in a treble and
wheezy voice, with a slightly mincing accent. "Will you please to step
in, sir, an' tek somethink?"

"No, I must be getting on to Rosseter. I only want a drink for my horse.
And what does your parson say, I wonder, to a young woman preaching just
under his nose?"

"Parson Irwine, sir, doesn't live here; he lives at Brox'on, over the
hill there. The parsonage here's a tumble-down place, sir, not fit for
gentry to live in. He comes here to preach of a Sunday afternoon, sir,
an' puts up his hoss here. It's a grey cob, sir, an' he sets great store
by't. He's allays put up his hoss here, sir, iver since before I hed the
Donnithorne Arms. I'm not this countryman, you may tell by my tongue,
sir. They're cur'ous talkers i' this country, sir; the gentry's hard
work to hunderstand 'em. I was brought hup among the gentry, sir, an'
got the turn o' their tongue when I was a bye. Why, what do you think
the folks here says for 'hevn't you?'--the gentry, you know, says,
'hevn't you'--well, the people about here says 'hanna yey.' It's what
they call the dileck as is spoke hereabout, sir. That's what I've heared
Squire Donnithorne say many a time; it's the dileck, says he."

"Aye, aye," said the stranger, smiling. "I know it very well. But you've
not got many Methodists about here, surely--in this agricultural spot? I
should have thought there would hardly be such a thing as a Methodist to
be found about here. You're all farmers, aren't you? The Methodists can
seldom lay much hold on THEM."

"Why, sir, there's a pretty lot o' workmen round about, sir. There's
Mester Burge as owns the timber-yard over there, he underteks a good bit
o' building an' repairs. An' there's the stone-pits not far off. There's
plenty of emply i' this countryside, sir. An' there's a fine batch o'
Methodisses at Treddles'on--that's the market town about three mile
off--you'll maybe ha' come through it, sir. There's pretty nigh a score
of 'em on the Green now, as come from there. That's where our people
gets it from, though there's only two men of 'em in all Hayslope: that's
Will Maskery, the wheelwright, and Seth Bede, a young man as works at
the carpenterin'."

"The preacher comes from Treddleston, then, does she?"

"Nay, sir, she comes out o' Stonyshire, pretty nigh thirty mile off.
But she's a-visitin' hereabout at Mester Poyser's at the Hall Farm--it's
them barns an' big walnut-trees, right away to the left, sir. She's own
niece to Poyser's wife, an' they'll be fine an' vexed at her for making
a fool of herself i' that way. But I've heared as there's no holding
these Methodisses when the maggit's once got i' their head: many of 'em
goes stark starin' mad wi' their religion. Though this young woman's
quiet enough to look at, by what I can make out; I've not seen her
myself."

"Well, I wish I had time to wait and see her, but I must get on. I've
been out of my way for the last twenty minutes to have a look at that
place in the valley. It's Squire Donnithorne's, I suppose?"

"Yes, sir, that's Donnithorne Chase, that is. Fine hoaks there, isn't
there, sir? I should know what it is, sir, for I've lived butler there
a-going i' fifteen year. It's Captain Donnithorne as is th' heir,
sir--Squire Donnithorne's grandson. He'll be comin' of hage this
'ay-'arvest, sir, an' we shall hev fine doin's. He owns all the land
about here, sir, Squire Donnithorne does."

"Well, it's a pretty spot, whoever may own it," said the traveller,
mounting his horse; "and one meets some fine strapping fellows about
too. I met as fine a young fellow as ever I saw in my life, about
half an hour ago, before I came up the hill--a carpenter, a tall,
broad-shouldered fellow with black hair and black eyes, marching along
like a soldier. We want such fellows as he to lick the French."

"Aye, sir, that's Adam Bede, that is, I'll be bound--Thias Bede's son
everybody knows him hereabout. He's an uncommon clever stiddy fellow,
an' wonderful strong. Lord bless you, sir--if you'll hexcuse me for
saying so--he can walk forty mile a-day, an' lift a matter o' sixty
ston'. He's an uncommon favourite wi' the gentry, sir: Captain
Donnithorne and Parson Irwine meks a fine fuss wi' him. But he's a
little lifted up an' peppery-like."

"Well, good evening to you, landlord; I must get on."

"Your servant, sir; good evenin'."

The traveller put his horse into a quick walk up the village, but when
he approached the Green, the beauty of the view that lay on his right
hand, the singular contrast presented by the groups of villagers with
the knot of Methodists near the maple, and perhaps yet more, curiosity
to see the young female preacher, proved too much for his anxiety to get
to the end of his journey, and he paused.

The Green lay at the extremity of the village, and from it the road
branched off in two directions, one leading farther up the hill by the
church, and the other winding gently down towards the valley. On the
side of the Green that led towards the church, the broken line of
thatched cottages was continued nearly to the churchyard gate; but on
the opposite northwestern side, there was nothing to obstruct the view
of gently swelling meadow, and wooded valley, and dark masses of distant
hill. That rich undulating district of Loamshire to which Hayslope
belonged lies close to a grim outskirt of Stonyshire, overlooked by its
barren hills as a pretty blooming sister may sometimes be seen linked in
the arm of a rugged, tall, swarthy brother; and in two or three hours'
ride the traveller might exchange a bleak treeless region, intersected
by lines of cold grey stone, for one where his road wound under the
shelter of woods, or up swelling hills, muffled with hedgerows and long
meadow-grass and thick corn; and where at every turn he came upon some
fine old country-seat nestled in the valley or crowning the slope, some
homestead with its long length of barn and its cluster of golden ricks,
some grey steeple looking out from a pretty confusion of trees and
thatch and dark-red tiles. It was just such a picture as this last
that Hayslope Church had made to the traveller as he began to mount the
gentle slope leading to its pleasant uplands, and now from his station
near the Green he had before him in one view nearly all the other
typical features of this pleasant land. High up against the horizon were
the huge conical masses of hill, like giant mounds intended to fortify
this region of corn and grass against the keen and hungry winds of the
north; not distant enough to be clothed in purple mystery, but with
sombre greenish sides visibly specked with sheep, whose motion was only
revealed by memory, not detected by sight; wooed from day to day by the
changing hours, but responding with no change in themselves--left for
ever grim and sullen after the flush of morning, the winged gleams of
the April noonday, the parting crimson glory of the ripening summer
sun. And directly below them the eye rested on a more advanced line of
hanging woods, divided by bright patches of pasture or furrowed crops,
and not yet deepened into the uniform leafy curtains of high summer, but
still showing the warm tints of the young oak and the tender green of
the ash and lime. Then came the valley, where the woods grew thicker,
as if they had rolled down and hurried together from the patches left
smooth on the slope, that they might take the better care of the tall
mansion which lifted its parapets and sent its faint blue summer smoke
among them. Doubtless there was a large sweep of park and a broad glassy
pool in front of that mansion, but the swelling slope of meadow would
not let our traveller see them from the village green. He saw instead
a foreground which was just as lovely--the level sunlight lying like
transparent gold among the gently curving stems of the feathered grass
and the tall red sorrel, and the white ambels of the hemlocks lining
the bushy hedgerows. It was that moment in summer when the sound of
the scythe being whetted makes us cast more lingering looks at the
flower-sprinkled tresses of the meadows.

He might have seen other beauties in the landscape if he had turned
a little in his saddle and looked eastward, beyond Jonathan Burge's
pasture and woodyard towards the green corn-fields and walnut-trees of
the Hall Farm; but apparently there was more interest for him in the
living groups close at hand. Every generation in the village was there,
from old "Feyther Taft" in his brown worsted night-cap, who was bent
nearly double, but seemed tough enough to keep on his legs a long while,
leaning on his short stick, down to the babies with their little round
heads lolling forward in quilted linen caps. Now and then there was a
new arrival; perhaps a slouching labourer, who, having eaten his supper,
came out to look at the unusual scene with a slow bovine gaze, willing
to hear what any one had to say in explanation of it, but by no means
excited enough to ask a question. But all took care not to join the
Methodists on the Green, and identify themselves in that way with the
expectant audience, for there was not one of them that would not have
disclaimed the imputation of having come out to hear the "preacher
woman"--they had only come out to see "what war a-goin' on, like." The
men were chiefly gathered in the neighbourhood of the blacksmith's shop.
But do not imagine them gathered in a knot. Villagers never swarm: a
whisper is unknown among them, and they seem almost as incapable of an
undertone as a cow or a stag. Your true rustic turns his back on his
interlocutor, throwing a question over his shoulder as if he meant to
run away from the answer, and walking a step or two farther off when the
interest of the dialogue culminates. So the group in the vicinity of the
blacksmith's door was by no means a close one, and formed no screen in
front of Chad Cranage, the blacksmith himself, who stood with his black
brawny arms folded, leaning against the door-post, and occasionally
sending forth a bellowing laugh at his own jokes, giving them a
marked preference over the sarcasms of Wiry Ben, who had renounced the
pleasures of the Holly Bush for the sake of seeing life under a new
form. But both styles of wit were treated with equal contempt by Mr.
Joshua Rann. Mr. Rann's leathern apron and subdued griminess can leave
no one in any doubt that he is the village shoemaker; the thrusting out
of his chin and stomach and the twirling of his thumbs are more subtle
indications, intended to prepare unwary strangers for the discovery that
they are in the presence of the parish clerk. "Old Joshway," as he
is irreverently called by his neighbours, is in a state of simmering
indignation; but he has not yet opened his lips except to say, in a
resounding bass undertone, like the tuning of a violoncello, "Sehon,
King of the Amorites; for His mercy endureth for ever; and Og the King
of Basan: for His mercy endureth for ever"--a quotation which may seem
to have slight bearing on the present occasion, but, as with every other
anomaly, adequate knowledge will show it to be a natural sequence. Mr.
Rann was inwardly maintaining the dignity of the Church in the face of
this scandalous irruption of Methodism, and as that dignity was bound up
with his own sonorous utterance of the responses, his argument naturally
suggested a quotation from the psalm he had read the last Sunday
afternoon.

The stronger curiosity of the women had drawn them quite to the edge of
the Green, where they could examine more closely the Quakerlike costume
and odd deportment of the female Methodists. Underneath the maple there
was a small cart, which had been brought from the wheelwright's to serve
as a pulpit, and round this a couple of benches and a few chairs had
been placed. Some of the Methodists were resting on these, with their
eyes closed, as if wrapt in prayer or meditation. Others chose to
continue standing, and had turned their faces towards the villagers
with a look of melancholy compassion, which was highly amusing to Bessy
Cranage, the blacksmith's buxom daughter, known to her neighbours as
Chad's Bess, who wondered "why the folks war amakin' faces a that'ns."
Chad's Bess was the object of peculiar compassion, because her hair,
being turned back under a cap which was set at the top of her head,
exposed to view an ornament of which she was much prouder than of her
red cheeks--namely, a pair of large round ear-rings with false garnets
in them, ornaments condemned not only by the Methodists, but by her own
cousin and namesake Timothy's Bess, who, with much cousinly feeling,
often wished "them ear-rings" might come to good.

Timothy's Bess, though retaining her maiden appellation among her
familiars, had long been the wife of Sandy Jim, and possessed a handsome
set of matronly jewels, of which it is enough to mention the heavy
baby she was rocking in her arms, and the sturdy fellow of five in
knee-breeches, and red legs, who had a rusty milk-can round his neck by
way of drum, and was very carefully avoided by Chad's small terrier.
This young olive-branch, notorious under the name of Timothy's Bess's
Ben, being of an inquiring disposition, unchecked by any false modesty,
had advanced beyond the group of women and children, and was walking
round the Methodists, looking up in their faces with his mouth wide
open, and beating his stick against the milk-can by way of musical
accompaniment. But one of the elderly women bending down to take him by
the shoulder, with an air of grave remonstrance, Timothy's Bess's Ben
first kicked out vigorously, then took to his heels and sought refuge
behind his father's legs.

"Ye gallows young dog," said Sandy Jim, with some paternal pride, "if
ye donna keep that stick quiet, I'll tek it from ye. What dy'e mane by
kickin' foulks?"

"Here! Gie him here to me, Jim," said Chad Cranage; "I'll tie hirs up
an' shoe him as I do th' hosses. Well, Mester Casson," he continued,
as that personage sauntered up towards the group of men, "how are ye
t' naight? Are ye coom t' help groon? They say folks allays groon when
they're hearkenin' to th' Methodys, as if they war bad i' th' inside.
I mane to groon as loud as your cow did th' other naight, an' then the
praicher 'ull think I'm i' th' raight way."

"I'd advise you not to be up to no nonsense, Chad," said Mr. Casson,
with some dignity; "Poyser wouldn't like to hear as his wife's niece was
treated any ways disrespectful, for all he mayn't be fond of her taking
on herself to preach."

"Aye, an' she's a pleasant-looked un too," said Wiry Ben. "I'll stick
up for the pretty women preachin'; I know they'd persuade me over a deal
sooner nor th' ugly men. I shouldna wonder if I turn Methody afore the
night's out, an' begin to coort the preacher, like Seth Bede."

"Why, Seth's looking rether too high, I should think," said Mr. Casson.
"This woman's kin wouldn't like her to demean herself to a common
carpenter."

"Tchu!" said Ben, with a long treble intonation, "what's folks's kin got
to do wi't? Not a chip. Poyser's wife may turn her nose up an' forget
bygones, but this Dinah Morris, they tell me, 's as poor as iver she
was--works at a mill, an's much ado to keep hersen. A strappin' young
carpenter as is a ready-made Methody, like Seth, wouldna be a bad match
for her. Why, Poysers make as big a fuss wi' Adam Bede as if he war a
nevvy o' their own."

"Idle talk! idle talk!" said Mr. Joshua Rann. "Adam an' Seth's two men;
you wunna fit them two wi' the same last."

"Maybe," said Wiry Ben, contemptuously, "but Seth's the lad for me,
though he war a Methody twice o'er. I'm fair beat wi' Seth, for I've
been teasin' him iver sin' we've been workin' together, an' he bears me
no more malice nor a lamb. An' he's a stout-hearted feller too, for when
we saw the old tree all afire a-comin' across the fields one night, an'
we thought as it war a boguy, Seth made no more ado, but he up to't
as bold as a constable. Why, there he comes out o' Will Maskery's; an'
there's Will hisself, lookin' as meek as if he couldna knock a nail o'
the head for fear o' hurtin't. An' there's the pretty preacher woman! My
eye, she's got her bonnet off. I mun go a bit nearer."

Several of the men followed Ben's lead, and the traveller pushed his
horse on to the Green, as Dinah walked rather quickly and in advance of
her companions towards the cart under the maple-tree. While she was near
Seth's tall figure, she looked short, but when she had mounted the cart,
and was away from all comparison, she seemed above the middle height of
woman, though in reality she did not exceed it--an effect which was due
to the slimness of her figure and the simple line of her black stuff
dress. The stranger was struck with surprise as he saw her approach and
mount the cart--surprise, not so much at the feminine delicacy of
her appearance, as at the total absence of self-consciousness in her
demeanour. He had made up his mind to see her advance with a measured
step and a demure solemnity of countenance; he had felt sure that her
face would be mantled with the smile of conscious saintship, or
else charged with denunciatory bitterness. He knew but two types of
Methodist--the ecstatic and the bilious. But Dinah walked as simply as
if she were going to market, and seemed as unconscious of her outward
appearance as a little boy: there was no blush, no tremulousness, which
said, "I know you think me a pretty woman, too young to preach"; no
casting up or down of the eyelids, no compression of the lips, no
attitude of the arms that said, "But you must think of me as a saint."
She held no book in her ungloved hands, but let them hang down lightly
crossed before her, as she stood and turned her grey eyes on the people.
There was no keenness in the eyes; they seemed rather to be shedding
love than making observations; they had the liquid look which tells that
the mind is full of what it has to give out, rather than impressed by
external objects. She stood with her left hand towards the descending
sun, and leafy boughs screened her from its rays; but in this sober
light the delicate colouring of her face seemed to gather a calm
vividness, like flowers at evening. It was a small oval face, of a
uniform transparent whiteness, with an egg-like line of cheek and chin,
a full but firm mouth, a delicate nostril, and a low perpendicular brow,
surmounted by a rising arch of parting between smooth locks of pale
reddish hair. The hair was drawn straight back behind the ears, and
covered, except for an inch or two above the brow, by a net Quaker cap.
The eyebrows, of the same colour as the hair, were perfectly horizontal
and firmly pencilled; the eyelashes, though no darker, were long and
abundant--nothing was left blurred or unfinished. It was one of those
faces that make one think of white flowers with light touches of colour
on their pure petals. The eyes had no peculiar beauty, beyond that of
expression; they looked so simple, so candid, so gravely loving, that
no accusing scowl, no light sneer could help melting away before their
glance. Joshua Rann gave a long cough, as if he were clearing his throat
in order to come to a new understanding with himself; Chad Cranage
lifted up his leather skull-cap and scratched his head; and Wiry Ben
wondered how Seth had the pluck to think of courting her.

"A sweet woman," the stranger said to himself, "but surely nature never
meant her for a preacher."

Perhaps he was one of those who think that nature has theatrical
properties and, with the considerate view of facilitating art and
psychology, "makes up," her characters, so that there may be no mistake
about them. But Dinah began to speak.

"Dear friends," she said in a clear but not loud voice "let us pray for
a blessing."

She closed her eyes, and hanging her head down a little continued in the
same moderate tone, as if speaking to some one quite near her: "Saviour
of sinners! When a poor woman laden with sins, went out to the well to
draw water, she found Thee sitting at the well. She knew Thee not; she
had not sought Thee; her mind was dark; her life was unholy. But Thou
didst speak to her, Thou didst teach her, Thou didst show her that her
life lay open before Thee, and yet Thou wast ready to give her that
blessing which she had never sought. Jesus, Thou art in the midst of us,
and Thou knowest all men: if there is any here like that poor woman--if
their minds are dark, their lives unholy--if they have come out not
seeking Thee, not desiring to be taught; deal with them according to the
free mercy which Thou didst show to her. Speak to them, Lord, open their
ears to my message, bring their sins to their minds, and make them
thirst for that salvation which Thou art ready to give.

"Lord, Thou art with Thy people still: they see Thee in the
night-watches, and their hearts burn within them as Thou talkest with
them by the way. And Thou art near to those who have not known Thee:
open their eyes that they may see Thee--see Thee weeping over them,
and saying 'Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life'--see Thee
hanging on the cross and saying, 'Father, forgive them, for they know
not what they do'--see Thee as Thou wilt come again in Thy glory to
judge them at the last. Amen."

Dinah opened her eyes again and paused, looking at the group of
villagers, who were now gathered rather more closely on her right hand.

"Dear friends," she began, raising her voice a little, "you have all of
you been to church, and I think you must have heard the clergyman
read these words: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath
anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.' Jesus Christ spoke those
words--he said he came TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. I don't know
whether you ever thought about those words much, but I will tell you
when I remember first hearing them. It was on just such a sort of
evening as this, when I was a little girl, and my aunt as brought me up
took me to hear a good man preach out of doors, just as we are here. I
remember his face well: he was a very old man, and had very long white
hair; his voice was very soft and beautiful, not like any voice I had
ever heard before. I was a little girl and scarcely knew anything, and
this old man seemed to me such a different sort of a man from anybody
I had ever seen before that I thought he had perhaps come down from
the sky to preach to us, and I said, 'Aunt, will he go back to the sky
to-night, like the picture in the Bible?'

"That man of God was Mr. Wesley, who spent his life in doing what our
blessed Lord did--preaching the Gospel to the poor--and he entered into
his rest eight years ago. I came to know more about him years after, but
I was a foolish thoughtless child then, and I remembered only one thing
he told us in his sermon. He told us as 'Gospel' meant 'good news.' The
Gospel, you know, is what the Bible tells us about God.

"Think of that now! Jesus Christ did really come down from heaven, as
I, like a silly child, thought Mr. Wesley did; and what he came down
for was to tell good news about God to the poor. Why, you and me, dear
friends, are poor. We have been brought up in poor cottages and have
been reared on oat-cake, and lived coarse; and we haven't been to school
much, nor read books, and we don't know much about anything but what
happens just round us. We are just the sort of people that want to
hear good news. For when anybody's well off, they don't much mind about
hearing news from distant parts; but if a poor man or woman's in trouble
and has hard work to make out a living, they like to have a letter to
tell 'em they've got a friend as will help 'em. To be sure, we can't
help knowing something about God, even if we've never heard the Gospel,
the good news that our Saviour brought us. For we know everything comes
from God: don't you say almost every day, 'This and that will happen,
please God,' and 'We shall begin to cut the grass soon, please God to
send us a little more sunshine'? We know very well we are altogether
in the hands of God. We didn't bring ourselves into the world, we can't
keep ourselves alive while we're sleeping; the daylight, and the wind,
and the corn, and the cows to give us milk--everything we have comes
from God. And he gave us our souls and put love between parents and
children, and husband and wife. But is that as much as we want to know
about God? We see he is great and mighty, and can do what he will: we
are lost, as if we was struggling in great waters, when we try to think
of him.

"But perhaps doubts come into your mind like this: Can God take much
notice of us poor people? Perhaps he only made the world for the great
and the wise and the rich. It doesn't cost him much to give us our
little handful of victual and bit of clothing; but how do we know he
cares for us any more than we care for the worms and things in the
garden, so as we rear our carrots and onions? Will God take care of us
when we die? And has he any comfort for us when we are lame and sick and
helpless? Perhaps, too, he is angry with us; else why does the blight
come, and the bad harvests, and the fever, and all sorts of pain and
trouble? For our life is full of trouble, and if God sends us good, he
seems to send bad too. How is it? How is it?

"Ah, dear friends, we are in sad want of good news about God; and what
does other good news signify if we haven't that? For everything else
comes to an end, and when we die we leave it all. But God lasts when
everything else is gone. What shall we do if he is not our friend?"

Then Dinah told how the good news had been brought, and how the mind
of God towards the poor had been made manifest in the life of Jesus,
dwelling on its lowliness and its acts of mercy.

"So you see, dear friends," she went on, "Jesus spent his time almost
all in doing good to poor people; he preached out of doors to them, and
he made friends of poor workmen, and taught them and took pains with
them. Not but what he did good to the rich too, for he was full of love
to all men, only he saw as the poor were more in want of his help. So
he cured the lame and the sick and the blind, and he worked miracles to
feed the hungry because, he said, he was sorry for them; and he was
very kind to the little children and comforted those who had lost their
friends; and he spoke very tenderly to poor sinners that were sorry for
their sins.

"Ah, wouldn't you love such a man if you saw him--if he were here in
this village? What a kind heart he must have! What a friend he would be
to go to in trouble! How pleasant it must be to be taught by him.

"Well, dear friends, who WAS this man? Was he only a good man--a very
good man, and no more--like our dear Mr. Wesley, who has been taken from
us?...He was the Son of God--'in the image of the Father,' the Bible
says; that means, just like God, who is the beginning and end of all
things--the God we want to know about. So then, all the love that
Jesus showed to the poor is the same love that God has for us. We can
understand what Jesus felt, because he came in a body like ours and
spoke words such as we speak to each other. We were afraid to think what
God was before--the God who made the world and the sky and the thunder
and lightning. We could never see him; we could only see the things he
had made; and some of these things was very terrible, so as we might
well tremble when we thought of him. But our blessed Saviour has showed
us what God is in a way us poor ignorant people can understand; he has
showed us what God's heart is, what are his feelings towards us.

"But let us see a little more about what Jesus came on earth for.
Another time he said, 'I came to seek and to save that which was lost';
and another time, 'I came not to call the righteous but sinners to
repentance.'

"The LOST!...SINNERS!...Ah, dear friends, does that mean you and me?"

Hitherto the traveller had been chained to the spot against his will
by the charm of Dinah's mellow treble tones, which had a variety of
modulation like that of a fine instrument touched with the unconscious
skill of musical instinct. The simple things she said seemed like
novelties, as a melody strikes us with a new feeling when we hear
it sung by the pure voice of a boyish chorister; the quiet depth of
conviction with which she spoke seemed in itself an evidence for the
truth of her message. He saw that she had thoroughly arrested her
hearers. The villagers had pressed nearer to her, and there was no
longer anything but grave attention on all faces. She spoke slowly,
though quite fluently, often pausing after a question, or before any
transition of ideas. There was no change of attitude, no gesture; the
effect of her speech was produced entirely by the inflections of her
voice, and when she came to the question, "Will God take care of us
when we die?" she uttered it in such a tone of plaintive appeal that
the tears came into some of the hardest eyes. The stranger had ceased
to doubt, as he had done at the first glance, that she could fix the
attention of her rougher hearers, but still he wondered whether she
could have that power of rousing their more violent emotions, which
must surely be a necessary seal of her vocation as a Methodist preacher,
until she came to the words, "Lost!--Sinners!" when there was a great
change in her voice and manner. She had made a long pause before the
exclamation, and the pause seemed to be filled by agitating thoughts
that showed themselves in her features. Her pale face became paler;
the circles under her eyes deepened, as they did when tears half-gather
without falling; and the mild loving eyes took an expression of appalled
pity, as if she had suddenly discerned a destroying angel hovering over
the heads of the people. Her voice became deep and muffled, but there
was still no gesture. Nothing could be less like the ordinary type of
the Ranter than Dinah. She was not preaching as she heard others preach,
but speaking directly from her own emotions and under the inspiration of
her own simple faith.

But now she had entered into a new current of feeling. Her manner became
less calm, her utterance more rapid and agitated, as she tried to bring
home to the people their guilt, their wilful darkness, their state of
disobedience to God--as she dwelt on the hatefulness of sin, the Divine
holiness, and the sufferings of the Saviour, by which a way had been
opened for their salvation. At last it seemed as if, in her yearning
desire to reclaim the lost sheep, she could not be satisfied by
addressing her hearers as a body. She appealed first to one and then to
another, beseeching them with tears to turn to God while there was
yet time; painting to them the desolation of their souls, lost in sin,
feeding on the husks of this miserable world, far away from God their
Father; and then the love of the Saviour, who was waiting and watching
for their return.

There was many a responsive sigh and groan from her fellow-Methodists,
but the village mind does not easily take fire, and a little smouldering
vague anxiety that might easily die out again was the utmost effect
Dinah's preaching had wrought in them at present. Yet no one had
retired, except the children and "old Feyther Taft," who being too deaf
to catch many words, had some time ago gone back to his inglenook. Wiry
Ben was feeling very uncomfortable, and almost wishing he had not come
to hear Dinah; he thought what she said would haunt him somehow. Yet he
couldn't help liking to look at her and listen to her, though he dreaded
every moment that she would fix her eyes on him and address him in
particular. She had already addressed Sandy Jim, who was now holding the
baby to relieve his wife, and the big soft-hearted man had rubbed away
some tears with his fist, with a confused intention of being a better
fellow, going less to the Holly Bush down by the Stone-pits, and
cleaning himself more regularly of a Sunday.

In front of Sandy Jim stood Chad's Bess, who had shown an unwonted
quietude and fixity of attention ever since Dinah had begun to speak.
Not that the matter of the discourse had arrested her at once, for she
was lost in a puzzling speculation as to what pleasure and satisfaction
there could be in life to a young woman who wore a cap like Dinah's.
Giving up this inquiry in despair, she took to studying Dinah's nose,
eyes, mouth, and hair, and wondering whether it was better to have such
a sort of pale face as that, or fat red cheeks and round black eyes like
her own. But gradually the influence of the general gravity told upon
her, and she became conscious of what Dinah was saying. The gentle
tones, the loving persuasion, did not touch her, but when the more
severe appeals came she began to be frightened. Poor Bessy had always
been considered a naughty girl; she was conscious of it; if it was
necessary to be very good, it was clear she must be in a bad way. She
couldn't find her places at church as Sally Rann could, she had often
been tittering when she "curcheyed" to Mr. Irwine; and these religious
deficiencies were accompanied by a corresponding slackness in the minor
morals, for Bessy belonged unquestionably to that unsoaped lazy class of
feminine characters with whom you may venture to "eat an egg, an apple,
or a nut." All this she was generally conscious of, and hitherto had not
been greatly ashamed of it. But now she began to feel very much as if
the constable had come to take her up and carry her before the justice
for some undefined offence. She had a terrified sense that God, whom she
had always thought of as very far off, was very near to her, and that
Jesus was close by looking at her, though she could not see him. For
Dinah had that belief in visible manifestations of Jesus, which is
common among the Methodists, and she communicated it irresistibly to her
hearers: she made them feel that he was among them bodily, and might at
any moment show himself to them in some way that would strike anguish
and penitence into their hearts.

"See!" she exclaimed, turning to the left, with her eyes fixed on a
point above the heads of the people. "See where our blessed Lord stands
and weeps and stretches out his arms towards you. Hear what he says:
'How often would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens
under her wings, and ye would not!'...and ye would not," she repeated,
in a tone of pleading reproach, turning her eyes on the people again.
"See the print of the nails on his dear hands and feet. It is your sins
that made them! Ah! How pale and worn he looks! He has gone through all
that great agony in the garden, when his soul was exceeding sorrowful
even unto death, and the great drops of sweat fell like blood to the
ground. They spat upon him and buffeted him, they scourged him, they
mocked him, they laid the heavy cross on his bruised shoulders. Then
they nailed him up. Ah, what pain! His lips are parched with thirst, and
they mock him still in this great agony; yet with those parched lips he
prays for them, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.'
Then a horror of great darkness fell upon him, and he felt what sinners
feel when they are for ever shut out from God. That was the last drop
in the cup of bitterness. 'My God, my God!' he cries, 'why hast Thou
forsaken me?'

"All this he bore for you! For you--and you never think of him; for
you--and you turn your backs on him; you don't care what he has gone
through for you. Yet he is not weary of toiling for you: he has risen
from the dead, he is praying for you at the right hand of God--'Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do.' And he is upon this earth
too; he is among us; he is there close to you now; I see his wounded
body and his look of love."

Here Dinah turned to Bessy Cranage, whose bonny youth and evident vanity
had touched her with pity.

"Poor child! Poor child! He is beseeching you, and you don't listen to
him. You think of ear-rings and fine gowns and caps, and you never think
of the Saviour who died to save your precious soul. Your cheeks will be
shrivelled one day, your hair will be grey, your poor body will be thin
and tottering! Then you will begin to feel that your soul is not saved;
then you will have to stand before God dressed in your sins, in your
evil tempers and vain thoughts. And Jesus, who stands ready to help you
now, won't help you then; because you won't have him to be your Saviour,
he will be your judge. Now he looks at you with love and mercy and says,
'Come to me that you may have life'; then he will turn away from you,
and say, 'Depart from me into ever-lasting fire!'"

Poor Bessy's wide-open black eyes began to fill with tears, her great
red cheeks and lips became quite pale, and her face was distorted like a
little child's before a burst of crying.

"Ah, poor blind child!" Dinah went on, "think if it should happen to you
as it once happened to a servant of God in the days of her vanity. SHE
thought of her lace caps and saved all her money to buy 'em; she thought
nothing about how she might get a clean heart and a right spirit--she
only wanted to have better lace than other girls. And one day when she
put her new cap on and looked in the glass, she saw a bleeding Face
crowned with thorns. That face is looking at you now"--here Dinah
pointed to a spot close in front of Bessy--"Ah, tear off those follies!
Cast them away from you, as if they were stinging adders. They ARE
stinging you--they are poisoning your soul--they are dragging you down
into a dark bottomless pit, where you will sink for ever, and for ever,
and for ever, further away from light and God."

Bessy could bear it no longer: a great terror was upon her, and
wrenching her ear-rings from her ears, she threw them down before her,
sobbing aloud. Her father, Chad, frightened lest he should be "laid hold
on" too, this impression on the rebellious Bess striking him as nothing
less than a miracle, walked hastily away and began to work at his anvil
by way of reassuring himself. "Folks mun ha' hoss-shoes, praichin' or
no praichin': the divil canna lay hould o' me for that," he muttered to
himself.

But now Dinah began to tell of the joys that were in store for the
penitent, and to describe in her simple way the divine peace and love
with which the soul of the believer is filled--how the sense of God's
love turns poverty into riches and satisfies the soul so that no uneasy
desire vexes it, no fear alarms it: how, at last, the very temptation
to sin is extinguished, and heaven is begun upon earth, because no cloud
passes between the soul and God, who is its eternal sun.

"Dear friends," she said at last, "brothers and sisters, whom I love
as those for whom my Lord has died, believe me, I know what this great
blessedness is; and because I know it, I want you to have it too. I am
poor, like you: I have to get my living with my hands; but no lord nor
lady can be so happy as me, if they haven't got the love of God in their
souls. Think what it is--not to hate anything but sin; to be full of
love to every creature; to be frightened at nothing; to be sure that all
things will turn to good; not to mind pain, because it is our Father's
will; to know that nothing--no, not if the earth was to be burnt up, or
the waters come and drown us--nothing could part us from God who loves
us, and who fills our souls with peace and joy, because we are sure that
whatever he wills is holy, just, and good.

"Dear friends, come and take this blessedness; it is offered to you; it
is the good news that Jesus came to preach to the poor. It is not like
the riches of this world, so that the more one gets the less the rest
can have. God is without end; his love is without end--"

     Its streams the whole creation reach,
     So plenteous is the store;
     Enough for all, enough for each,
     Enough for evermore.

Dinah had been speaking at least an hour, and the reddening light of the
parting day seemed to give a solemn emphasis to her closing words. The
stranger, who had been interested in the course of her sermon as if
it had been the development of a drama--for there is this sort of
fascination in all sincere unpremeditated eloquence, which opens to one
the inward drama of the speaker's emotions--now turned his horse aside
and pursued his way, while Dinah said, "Let us sing a little, dear
friends"; and as he was still winding down the slope, the voices of the
Methodists reached him, rising and falling in that strange blending of
exultation and sadness which belongs to the cadence of a hymn.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: The traveler who had noticed Adam Bede stops at the village inn and speaks with the innkeeper, Mr. Casson, learning that Dinah is to preach. Curious, he goes to the green to observe. The townspeople of Hayslope -- only two of whom are Methodists -- gather in knots near the Green but stay aloof from the proceedings; they feel, in general, that Methodism is an overly emotional and overly strict form of religion. Dinah appears. She is young and delicately pretty, and is marked by "total absence of self-consciousness." Dinah proves to be a very effective preacher, drawing tears from some of her hearers and influencing one young woman to cast away her cheap earrings. Her sermon emphasizes God's love for and mercy towards sinners, and the rewards awaiting the good in heaven. The sermon ends, the traveler moves on, and the hills echo with the Methodists' singing.


prompt:
Chapter: IN less than an hour from that time, Seth Bede was walking by Dinah's
side along the hedgerow-path that skirted the pastures and green
corn-fields which lay between the village and the Hall Farm. Dinah had
taken off her little Quaker bonnet again, and was holding it in
her hands that she might have a freer enjoyment of the cool evening
twilight, and Seth could see the expression of her face quite clearly as
he walked by her side, timidly revolving something he wanted to say to
her. It was an expression of unconscious placid gravity--of absorption
in thoughts that had no connection with the present moment or with her
own personality--an expression that is most of all discouraging to a
lover. Her very walk was discouraging: it had that quiet elasticity that
asks for no support. Seth felt this dimly; he said to himself, "She's
too good and holy for any man, let alone me," and the words he had
been summoning rushed back again before they had reached his lips. But
another thought gave him courage: "There's no man could love her better
and leave her freer to follow the Lord's work." They had been silent for
many minutes now, since they had done talking about Bessy Cranage;
Dinah seemed almost to have forgotten Seth's presence, and her pace
was becoming so much quicker that the sense of their being only a few
minutes' walk from the yard-gates of the Hall Farm at last gave Seth
courage to speak.

"You've quite made up your mind to go back to Snowfield o' Saturday,
Dinah?"

"Yes," said Dinah, quietly. "I'm called there. It was borne in upon my
mind while I was meditating on Sunday night, as Sister Allen, who's in a
decline, is in need of me. I saw her as plain as we see that bit of thin
white cloud, lifting up her poor thin hand and beckoning to me. And this
morning when I opened the Bible for direction, the first words my
eyes fell on were, 'And after we had seen the vision, immediately we
endeavoured to go into Macedonia.' If it wasn't for that clear showing
of the Lord's will, I should be loath to go, for my heart yearns over
my aunt and her little ones, and that poor wandering lamb Hetty Sorrel.
I've been much drawn out in prayer for her of late, and I look on it as
a token that there may be mercy in store for her."

"God grant it," said Seth. "For I doubt Adam's heart is so set on her,
he'll never turn to anybody else; and yet it 'ud go to my heart if he
was to marry her, for I canna think as she'd make him happy. It's a deep
mystery--the way the heart of man turns to one woman out of all the rest
he's seen i' the world, and makes it easier for him to work seven year
for HER, like Jacob did for Rachel, sooner than have any other woman for
th' asking. I often think of them words, 'And Jacob served seven years
for Rachel; and they seemed to him but a few days for the love he had
to her.' I know those words 'ud come true with me, Dinah, if so be you'd
give me hope as I might win you after seven years was over. I know you
think a husband 'ud be taking up too much o' your thoughts, because St.
Paul says, 'She that's married careth for the things of the world how
she may please her husband'; and may happen you'll think me overbold to
speak to you about it again, after what you told me o' your mind last
Saturday. But I've been thinking it over again by night and by day, and
I've prayed not to be blinded by my own desires, to think what's only
good for me must be good for you too. And it seems to me there's more
texts for your marrying than ever you can find against it. For St. Paul
says as plain as can be in another place, 'I will that the younger
women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the
adversary to speak reproachfully'; and then 'two are better than one';
and that holds good with marriage as well as with other things. For we
should be o' one heart and o' one mind, Dinah. We both serve the same
Master, and are striving after the same gifts; and I'd never be the
husband to make a claim on you as could interfere with your doing the
work God has fitted you for. I'd make a shift, and fend indoor and out,
to give you more liberty--more than you can have now, for you've got to
get your own living now, and I'm strong enough to work for us both."

When Seth had once begun to urge his suit, he went on earnestly and
almost hurriedly, lest Dinah should speak some decisive word before he
had poured forth all the arguments he had prepared. His cheeks became
flushed as he went on his mild grey eyes filled with tears, and his
voice trembled as he spoke the last sentence. They had reached one of
those very narrow passes between two tall stones, which performed the
office of a stile in Loamshire, and Dinah paused as she turned towards
Seth and said, in her tender but calm treble notes, "Seth Bede, I thank
you for your love towards me, and if I could think of any man as more
than a Christian brother, I think it would be you. But my heart is not
free to marry. That is good for other women, and it is a great and a
blessed thing to be a wife and mother; but 'as God has distributed to
every man, as the Lord hath called every man, so let him walk.' God has
called me to minister to others, not to have any joys or sorrows of my
own, but to rejoice with them that do rejoice, and to weep with those
that weep. He has called me to speak his word, and he has greatly owned
my work. It could only be on a very clear showing that I could leave the
brethren and sisters at Snowfield, who are favoured with very little of
this world's good; where the trees are few, so that a child might count
them, and there's very hard living for the poor in the winter. It has
been given me to help, to comfort, and strengthen the little flock there
and to call in many wanderers; and my soul is filled with these things
from my rising up till my lying down. My life is too short, and God's
work is too great for me to think of making a home for myself in this
world. I've not turned a deaf ear to your words, Seth, for when I saw as
your love was given to me, I thought it might be a leading of Providence
for me to change my way of life, and that we should be fellow-helpers;
and I spread the matter before the Lord. But whenever I tried to fix my
mind on marriage, and our living together, other thoughts always came
in--the times when I've prayed by the sick and dying, and the happy
hours I've had preaching, when my heart was filled with love, and the
Word was given to me abundantly. And when I've opened the Bible for
direction, I've always lighted on some clear word to tell me where my
work lay. I believe what you say, Seth, that you would try to be a help
and not a hindrance to my work; but I see that our marriage is not God's
will--He draws my heart another way. I desire to live and die without
husband or children. I seem to have no room in my soul for wants and
fears of my own, it has pleased God to fill my heart so full with the
wants and sufferings of his poor people."

Seth was unable to reply, and they walked on in silence. At last, as
they were nearly at the yard-gate, he said, "Well, Dinah, I must seek
for strength to bear it, and to endure as seeing Him who is invisible.
But I feel now how weak my faith is. It seems as if, when you are gone,
I could never joy in anything any more. I think it's something passing
the love of women as I feel for you, for I could be content without
your marrying me if I could go and live at Snowfield and be near you.
I trusted as the strong love God has given me towards you was a leading
for us both; but it seems it was only meant for my trial. Perhaps I feel
more for you than I ought to feel for any creature, for I often can't
help saying of you what the hymn says--

     In darkest shades if she appear,
     My dawning is begun;
     She is my soul's bright morning-star,
     And she my rising sun.

That may be wrong, and I am to be taught better. But you wouldn't be
displeased with me if things turned out so as I could leave this country
and go to live at Snowfield?"

"No, Seth; but I counsel you to wait patiently, and not lightly to
leave your own country and kindred. Do nothing without the Lord's clear
bidding. It's a bleak and barren country there, not like this land of
Goshen you've been used to. We mustn't be in a hurry to fix and choose
our own lot; we must wait to be guided."

"But you'd let me write you a letter, Dinah, if there was anything I
wanted to tell you?"

"Yes, sure; let me know if you're in any trouble. You'll be continually
in my prayers."

They had now reached the yard-gate, and Seth said, "I won't go in,
Dinah, so farewell." He paused and hesitated after she had given him
her hand, and then said, "There's no knowing but what you may see things
different after a while. There may be a new leading."

"Let us leave that, Seth. It's good to live only a moment at a time, as
I've read in one of Mr. Wesley's books. It isn't for you and me to lay
plans; we've nothing to do but to obey and to trust. Farewell."

Dinah pressed his hand with rather a sad look in her loving eyes, and
then passed through the gate, while Seth turned away to walk lingeringly
home. But instead of taking the direct road, he chose to turn back along
the fields through which he and Dinah had already passed; and I think
his blue linen handkerchief was very wet with tears long before he
had made up his mind that it was time for him to set his face steadily
homewards. He was but three-and-twenty, and had only just learned what
it is to love--to love with that adoration which a young man gives to a
woman whom he feels to be greater and better than himself. Love of this
sort is hardly distinguishable from religious feeling. What deep and
worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or art or music. Our
caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence
of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or
Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness that they are
mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our
emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression into silence, our
love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object and loses itself in
the sense of divine mystery. And this blessed gift of venerating love
has been given to too many humble craftsmen since the world began for
us to feel any surprise that it should have existed in the soul of a
Methodist carpenter half a century ago, while there was yet a lingering
after-glow from the time when Wesley and his fellow-labourer fed on the
hips and haws of the Cornwall hedges, after exhausting limbs and lungs
in carrying a divine message to the poor.

That afterglow has long faded away; and the picture we are apt to make
of Methodism in our imagination is not an amphitheatre of green hills,
or the deep shade of broad-leaved sycamores, where a crowd of rough
men and weary-hearted women drank in a faith which was a rudimentary
culture, which linked their thoughts with the past, lifted their
imagination above the sordid details of their own narrow lives, and
suffused their souls with the sense of a pitying, loving, infinite
Presence, sweet as summer to the houseless needy. It is too possible
that to some of my readers Methodism may mean nothing more than
low-pitched gables up dingy streets, sleek grocers, sponging preachers,
and hypocritical jargon--elements which are regarded as an exhaustive
analysis of Methodism in many fashionable quarters.

That would be a pity; for I cannot pretend that Seth and Dinah were
anything else than Methodists--not indeed of that modern type which
reads quarterly reviews and attends in chapels with pillared porticoes,
but of a very old-fashioned kind. They believed in present miracles, in
instantaneous conversions, in revelations by dreams and visions; they
drew lots, and sought for Divine guidance by opening the Bible at
hazard; having a literal way of interpreting the Scriptures, which is
not at all sanctioned by approved commentators; and it is impossible
for me to represent their diction as correct, or their instruction as
liberal. Still--if I have read religious history aright--faith,
hope, and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a
sensibility to the three concords, and it is possible--thank Heaven!--to
have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings. The raw bacon
which clumsy Molly spares from her own scanty store that she may carry
it to her neighbour's child to "stop the fits," may be a piteously
inefficacious remedy; but the generous stirring of neighbourly kindness
that prompted the deed has a beneficent radiation that is not lost.

Considering these things, we can hardly think Dinah and Seth beneath our
sympathy, accustomed as we may be to weep over the loftier sorrows
of heroines in satin boots and crinoline, and of heroes riding fiery
horses, themselves ridden by still more fiery passions.

Poor Seth! He was never on horseback in his life except once, when he
was a little lad, and Mr. Jonathan Burge took him up behind, telling
him to "hold on tight"; and instead of bursting out into wild accusing
apostrophes to God and destiny, he is resolving, as he now walks
homewards under the solemn starlight, to repress his sadness, to be less
bent on having his own will, and to live more for others, as Dinah does.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Seth sees Dinah home after the meeting; she is staying with her uncle and aunt, the Poysers, at the Hall Farm. He asks her to marry him, feeling her to be a beautiful soul, full of goodness. Dinah gently refuses, explaining that she wants to live without a family. Her whole life is dedicated to serving others, and she has no heart for considering her own selfish desires. Seth accepts her decision with regret and resignation; there are no hard feelings.


prompt:
Chapter: A GREEN valley with a brook running through it, full almost to
overflowing with the late rains, overhung by low stooping willows.
Across this brook a plank is thrown, and over this plank Adam Bede is
passing with his undoubting step, followed close by Gyp with the basket;
evidently making his way to the thatched house, with a stack of timber
by the side of it, about twenty yards up the opposite slope.

The door of the house is open, and an elderly woman is looking out; but
she is not placidly contemplating the evening sunshine; she has been
watching with dim eyes the gradually enlarging speck which for the last
few minutes she has been quite sure is her darling son Adam. Lisbeth
Bede loves her son with the love of a woman to whom her first-born has
come late in life. She is an anxious, spare, yet vigorous old woman,
clean as a snowdrop. Her grey hair is turned neatly back under a pure
linen cap with a black band round it; her broad chest is covered with a
buff neckerchief, and below this you see a sort of short bedgown made of
blue-checkered linen, tied round the waist and descending to the hips,
from whence there is a considerable length of linsey-woolsey petticoat.
For Lisbeth is tall, and in other points too there is a strong
likeness between her and her son Adam. Her dark eyes are somewhat dim
now--perhaps from too much crying--but her broadly marked eyebrows are
still black, her teeth are sound, and as she stands knitting rapidly and
unconsciously with her work-hardened hands, she has as firmly upright
an attitude as when she is carrying a pail of water on her head from the
spring. There is the same type of frame and the same keen activity of
temperament in mother and son, but it was not from her that Adam got his
well-filled brow and his expression of large-hearted intelligence.

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great
tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us
by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion;
and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every
movement. We hear a voice with the very cadence of our own uttering the
thoughts we despise; we see eyes--ah, so like our mother's!--averted
from us in cold alienation; and our last darling child startles us with
the air and gestures of the sister we parted from in bitterness long
years ago. The father to whom we owe our best heritage--the mechanical
instinct, the keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the
modelling hand--galls us and puts us to shame by his daily errors; the
long-lost mother, whose face we begin to see in the glass as our own
wrinkles come, once fretted our young souls with her anxious humours and
irrational persistence.

It is such a fond anxious mother's voice that you hear, as Lisbeth says,
"Well, my lad, it's gone seven by th' clock. Thee't allays stay till the
last child's born. Thee wants thy supper, I'll warrand. Where's Seth?
Gone arter some o's chapellin', I reckon?"

"Aye, aye, Seth's at no harm, mother, thee mayst be sure. But where's
father?" said Adam quickly, as he entered the house and glanced into the
room on the left hand, which was used as a workshop. "Hasn't he done the
coffin for Tholer? There's the stuff standing just as I left it this
morning."

"Done the coffin?" said Lisbeth, following him, and knitting
uninterruptedly, though she looked at her son very anxiously. "Eh, my
lad, he went aff to Treddles'on this forenoon, an's niver come back. I
doubt he's got to th' 'Waggin Overthrow' again."

A deep flush of anger passed rapidly over Adam's face. He said nothing,
but threw off his jacket and began to roll up his shirt-sleeves again.

"What art goin' to do, Adam?" said the mother, with a tone and look
of alarm. "Thee wouldstna go to work again, wi'out ha'in thy bit o'
supper?"

Adam, too angry to speak, walked into the workshop. But his mother threw
down her knitting, and, hurrying after him, took hold of his arm, and
said, in a tone of plaintive remonstrance, "Nay, my lad, my lad, thee
munna go wi'out thy supper; there's the taters wi' the gravy in 'em,
just as thee lik'st 'em. I saved 'em o' purpose for thee. Come an' ha'
thy supper, come."

"Let be!" said Adam impetuously, shaking her off and seizing one of
the planks that stood against the wall. "It's fine talking about having
supper when here's a coffin promised to be ready at Brox'on by seven
o'clock to-morrow morning, and ought to ha' been there now, and not a
nail struck yet. My throat's too full to swallow victuals."

"Why, thee canstna get the coffin ready," said Lisbeth. "Thee't work
thyself to death. It 'ud take thee all night to do't."

"What signifies how long it takes me? Isn't the coffin promised? Can
they bury the man without a coffin? I'd work my right hand off sooner
than deceive people with lies i' that way. It makes me mad to think
on't. I shall overrun these doings before long. I've stood enough of
'em."

Poor Lisbeth did not hear this threat for the first time, and if she had
been wise she would have gone away quietly and said nothing for the next
hour. But one of the lessons a woman most rarely learns is never to talk
to an angry or a drunken man. Lisbeth sat down on the chopping bench
and began to cry, and by the time she had cried enough to make her voice
very piteous, she burst out into words.

"Nay, my lad, my lad, thee wouldstna go away an' break thy mother's
heart, an' leave thy feyther to ruin. Thee wouldstna ha' 'em carry me to
th' churchyard, an' thee not to follow me. I shanna rest i' my grave
if I donna see thee at th' last; an' how's they to let thee know as I'm
a-dyin', if thee't gone a-workin' i' distant parts, an' Seth belike gone
arter thee, and thy feyther not able to hold a pen for's hand shakin',
besides not knowin' where thee art? Thee mun forgie thy feyther--thee
munna be so bitter again' him. He war a good feyther to thee afore he
took to th' drink. He's a clever workman, an' taught thee thy trade,
remember, an's niver gen me a blow nor so much as an ill word--no,
not even in 's drink. Thee wouldstna ha' 'm go to the workhus--thy own
feyther--an' him as was a fine-growed man an' handy at everythin' amost
as thee art thysen, five-an'-twenty 'ear ago, when thee wast a baby at
the breast."

Lisbeth's voice became louder, and choked with sobs--a sort of wail,
the most irritating of all sounds where real sorrows are to be borne and
real work to be done. Adam broke in impatiently.

"Now, Mother, don't cry and talk so. Haven't I got enough to vex me
without that? What's th' use o' telling me things as I only think too
much on every day? If I didna think on 'em, why should I do as I do, for
the sake o' keeping things together here? But I hate to be talking where
it's no use: I like to keep my breath for doing i'stead o' talking."

"I know thee dost things as nobody else 'ud do, my lad. But thee't
allays so hard upo' thy feyther, Adam. Thee think'st nothing too much
to do for Seth: thee snapp'st me up if iver I find faut wi' th' lad. But
thee't so angered wi' thy feyther, more nor wi' anybody else."

"That's better than speaking soft and letting things go the wrong way,
I reckon, isn't it? If I wasn't sharp with him he'd sell every bit o'
stuff i' th' yard and spend it on drink. I know there's a duty to be
done by my father, but it isn't my duty to encourage him in running
headlong to ruin. And what has Seth got to do with it? The lad does no
harm as I know of. But leave me alone, Mother, and let me get on with
the work."

Lisbeth dared not say any more; but she got up and called Gyp, thinking
to console herself somewhat for Adam's refusal of the supper she had
spread out in the loving expectation of looking at him while he ate it,
by feeding Adam's dog with extra liberality. But Gyp was watching his
master with wrinkled brow and ears erect, puzzled at this unusual course
of things; and though he glanced at Lisbeth when she called him, and
moved his fore-paws uneasily, well knowing that she was inviting him to
supper, he was in a divided state of mind, and remained seated on his
haunches, again fixing his eyes anxiously on his master. Adam noticed
Gyp's mental conflict, and though his anger had made him less tender
than usual to his mother, it did not prevent him from caring as much as
usual for his dog. We are apt to be kinder to the brutes that love us
than to the women that love us. Is it because the brutes are dumb?

"Go, Gyp; go, lad!" Adam said, in a tone of encouraging command; and
Gyp, apparently satisfied that duty and pleasure were one, followed
Lisbeth into the house-place.

But no sooner had he licked up his supper than he went back to his
master, while Lisbeth sat down alone to cry over her knitting. Women
who are never bitter and resentful are often the most querulous; and
if Solomon was as wise as he is reputed to be, I feel sure that when
he compared a contentious woman to a continual dropping on a very rainy
day, he had not a vixen in his eye--a fury with long nails, acrid and
selfish. Depend upon it, he meant a good creature, who had no joy but
in the happiness of the loved ones whom she contributed to make
uncomfortable, putting by all the tid-bits for them and spending nothing
on herself. Such a woman as Lisbeth, for example--at once patient and
complaining, self-renouncing and exacting, brooding the livelong day
over what happened yesterday and what is likely to happen to-morrow,
and crying very readily both at the good and the evil. But a certain
awe mingled itself with her idolatrous love of Adam, and when he said,
"Leave me alone," she was always silenced.

So the hours passed, to the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the
sound of Adam's tools. At last he called for a light and a draught
of water (beer was a thing only to be drunk on holidays), and Lisbeth
ventured to say as she took it in, "Thy supper stan's ready for thee,
when thee lik'st."

"Donna thee sit up, mother," said Adam, in a gentle tone. He had worked
off his anger now, and whenever he wished to be especially kind to his
mother, he fell into his strongest native accent and dialect, with which
at other times his speech was less deeply tinged. "I'll see to Father
when he comes home; maybe he wonna come at all to-night. I shall be
easier if thee't i' bed."

"Nay, I'll bide till Seth comes. He wonna be long now, I reckon."

It was then past nine by the clock, which was always in advance of
the days, and before it had struck ten the latch was lifted and Seth
entered. He had heard the sound of the tools as he was approaching.

"Why, Mother," he said, "how is it as Father's working so late?"

"It's none o' thy feyther as is a-workin'--thee might know that well
anoof if thy head warna full o' chapellin'--it's thy brother as does
iverything, for there's niver nobody else i' th' way to do nothin'."

Lisbeth was going on, for she was not at all afraid of Seth, and usually
poured into his ears all the querulousness which was repressed by her
awe of Adam. Seth had never in his life spoken a harsh word to his
mother, and timid people always wreak their peevishness on the gentle.
But Seth, with an anxious look, had passed into the workshop and said,
"Addy, how's this? What! Father's forgot the coffin?"

"Aye, lad, th' old tale; but I shall get it done," said Adam, looking up
and casting one of his bright keen glances at his brother. "Why, what's
the matter with thee? Thee't in trouble."

Seth's eyes were red, and there was a look of deep depression on his
mild face.

"Yes, Addy, but it's what must be borne, and can't be helped. Why,
thee'st never been to the school, then?"

"School? No, that screw can wait," said Adam, hammering away again.

"Let me take my turn now, and do thee go to bed," said Seth.

"No, lad, I'd rather go on, now I'm in harness. Thee't help me to carry
it to Brox'on when it's done. I'll call thee up at sunrise. Go and eat
thy supper, and shut the door so as I mayn't hear Mother's talk."

Seth knew that Adam always meant what he said, and was not to be
persuaded into meaning anything else. So he turned, with rather a heavy
heart, into the house-place.

"Adam's niver touched a bit o' victual sin' home he's come," said
Lisbeth. "I reckon thee'st hed thy supper at some o' thy Methody folks."

"Nay, Mother," said Seth, "I've had no supper yet."

"Come, then," said Lisbeth, "but donna thee ate the taters, for Adam
'ull happen ate 'em if I leave 'em stannin'. He loves a bit o' taters
an' gravy. But he's been so sore an' angered, he wouldn't ate 'em, for
all I'd putten 'em by o' purpose for him. An' he's been a-threatenin'
to go away again," she went on, whimpering, "an' I'm fast sure he'll go
some dawnin' afore I'm up, an' niver let me know aforehand, an' he'll
niver come back again when once he's gone. An' I'd better niver ha'
had a son, as is like no other body's son for the deftness an' th'
handiness, an' so looked on by th' grit folks, an' tall an' upright like
a poplar-tree, an' me to be parted from him an' niver see 'm no more."

"Come, Mother, donna grieve thyself in vain," said Seth, in a soothing
voice. "Thee'st not half so good reason to think as Adam 'ull go away
as to think he'll stay with thee. He may say such a thing when he's in
wrath--and he's got excuse for being wrathful sometimes--but his heart
'ud never let him go. Think how he's stood by us all when it's been none
so easy--paying his savings to free me from going for a soldier, an'
turnin' his earnin's into wood for father, when he's got plenty o' uses
for his money, and many a young man like him 'ud ha' been married and
settled before now. He'll never turn round and knock down his own work,
and forsake them as it's been the labour of his life to stand by."

"Donna talk to me about's marr'in'," said Lisbeth, crying afresh. "He's
set's heart on that Hetty Sorrel, as 'ull niver save a penny, an' 'ull
toss up her head at's old mother. An' to think as he might ha' Mary
Burge, an' be took partners, an' be a big man wi' workmen under him,
like Mester Burge--Dolly's told me so o'er and o'er again--if it warna
as he's set's heart on that bit of a wench, as is o' no more use nor the
gillyflower on the wall. An' he so wise at bookin' an' figurin', an' not
to know no better nor that!"

"But, Mother, thee know'st we canna love just where other folks 'ud have
us. There's nobody but God can control the heart of man. I could ha'
wished myself as Adam could ha' made another choice, but I wouldn't
reproach him for what he can't help. And I'm not sure but what he tries
to o'ercome it. But it's a matter as he doesn't like to be spoke to
about, and I can only pray to the Lord to bless and direct him."

"Aye, thee't allays ready enough at prayin', but I donna see as thee
gets much wi' thy prayin'. Thee wotna get double earnin's o' this side
Yule. Th' Methodies 'll niver make thee half the man thy brother is, for
all they're a-makin' a preacher on thee."

"It's partly truth thee speak'st there, Mother," said Seth, mildly;
"Adam's far before me, an's done more for me than I can ever do for him.
God distributes talents to every man according as He sees good. But thee
mustna undervally prayer. Prayer mayna bring money, but it brings us
what no money can buy--a power to keep from sin and be content with
God's will, whatever He may please to send. If thee wouldst pray to God
to help thee, and trust in His goodness, thee wouldstna be so uneasy
about things."

"Unaisy? I'm i' th' right on't to be unaisy. It's well seen on THEE what
it is niver to be unaisy. Thee't gi' away all thy earnin's, an' niver be
unaisy as thee'st nothin' laid up again' a rainy day. If Adam had been
as aisy as thee, he'd niver ha' had no money to pay for thee. Take
no thought for the morrow--take no thought--that's what thee't allays
sayin'; an' what comes on't? Why, as Adam has to take thought for thee."

"Those are the words o' the Bible, Mother," said Seth. "They don't
mean as we should be idle. They mean we shouldn't be overanxious and
worreting ourselves about what'll happen to-morrow, but do our duty and
leave the rest to God's will."

"Aye, aye, that's the way wi' thee: thee allays makes a peck o' thy own
words out o' a pint o' the Bible's. I donna see how thee't to know as
'take no thought for the morrow' means all that. An' when the Bible's
such a big book, an' thee canst read all thro't, an' ha' the pick o' the
texes, I canna think why thee dostna pick better words as donna mean so
much more nor they say. Adam doesna pick a that'n; I can understan' the
tex as he's allays a-sayin', 'God helps them as helps theirsens.'"

"Nay, Mother," said Seth, "that's no text o' the Bible. It comes out of
a book as Adam picked up at the stall at Treddles'on. It was wrote by
a knowing man, but overworldly, I doubt. However, that saying's partly
true; for the Bible tells us we must be workers together with God."

"Well, how'm I to know? It sounds like a tex. But what's th' matter wi'
th' lad? Thee't hardly atin' a bit o' supper. Dostna mean to ha' no more
nor that bit o' oat-cake? An' thee lookst as white as a flick o' new
bacon. What's th' matter wi' thee?"

"Nothing to mind about, Mother; I'm not hungry. I'll just look in at
Adam again, and see if he'll let me go on with the coffin."

"Ha' a drop o' warm broth?" said Lisbeth, whose motherly feeling now got
the better of her "nattering" habit. "I'll set two-three sticks a-light
in a minute."

"Nay, Mother, thank thee; thee't very good," said Seth, gratefully; and
encouraged by this touch of tenderness, he went on: "Let me pray a
bit with thee for Father, and Adam, and all of us--it'll comfort thee,
happen, more than thee thinkst."

"Well, I've nothin' to say again' it."

Lisbeth, though disposed always to take the negative side in her
conversations with Seth, had a vague sense that there was some comfort
and safety in the fact of his piety, and that it somehow relieved her
from the trouble of any spiritual transactions on her own behalf.

So the mother and son knelt down together, and Seth prayed for the poor
wandering father and for those who were sorrowing for him at home. And
when he came to the petition that Adam might never be called to set
up his tent in a far country, but that his mother might be cheered and
comforted by his presence all the days of her pilgrimage, Lisbeth's
ready tears flowed again, and she wept aloud.

When they rose from their knees, Seth went to Adam again and said, "Wilt
only lie down for an hour or two, and let me go on the while?"

"No, Seth, no. Make Mother go to bed, and go thyself."

Meantime Lisbeth had dried her eyes, and now followed Seth, holding
something in her hands. It was the brown-and-yellow platter containing
the baked potatoes with the gravy in them and bits of meat which she had
cut and mixed among them. Those were dear times, when wheaten bread
and fresh meat were delicacies to working people. She set the dish down
rather timidly on the bench by Adam's side and said, "Thee canst pick a
bit while thee't workin'. I'll bring thee another drop o' water."

"Aye, Mother, do," said Adam, kindly; "I'm getting very thirsty."

In half an hour all was quiet; no sound was to be heard in the house but
the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the ringing of Adam's tools.
The night was very still: when Adam opened the door to look out at
twelve o'clock, the only motion seemed to be in the glowing, twinkling
stars; every blade of grass was asleep.

Bodily haste and exertion usually leave our thoughts very much at the
mercy of our feelings and imagination; and it was so to-night with Adam.
While his muscles were working lustily, his mind seemed as passive as a
spectator at a diorama: scenes of the sad past, and probably sad
future, floating before him and giving place one to the other in swift
succession.

He saw how it would be to-morrow morning, when he had carried the coffin
to Broxton and was at home again, having his breakfast: his father
perhaps would come in ashamed to meet his son's glance--would sit down,
looking older and more tottering than he had done the morning before,
and hang down his head, examining the floor-quarries; while Lisbeth
would ask him how he supposed the coffin had been got ready, that he had
slinked off and left undone--for Lisbeth was always the first to utter
the word of reproach, although she cried at Adam's severity towards his
father.

"So it will go on, worsening and worsening," thought Adam; "there's no
slipping uphill again, and no standing still when once you 've begun
to slip down." And then the day came back to him when he was a little
fellow and used to run by his father's side, proud to be taken out
to work, and prouder still to hear his father boasting to his
fellow-workmen how "the little chap had an uncommon notion o'
carpentering." What a fine active fellow his father was then! When
people asked Adam whose little lad he was, he had a sense of distinction
as he answered, "I'm Thias Bede's lad." He was quite sure everybody
knew Thias Bede--didn't he make the wonderful pigeon-house at Broxton
parsonage? Those were happy days, especially when Seth, who was three
years the younger, began to go out working too, and Adam began to be a
teacher as well as a learner. But then came the days of sadness, when
Adam was someway on in his teens, and Thias began to loiter at the
public-houses, and Lisbeth began to cry at home, and to pour forth her
plaints in the hearing of her sons. Adam remembered well the night of
shame and anguish when he first saw his father quite wild and foolish,
shouting a song out fitfully among his drunken companions at the "Waggon
Overthrown." He had run away once when he was only eighteen, making
his escape in the morning twilight with a little blue bundle over
his shoulder, and his "mensuration book" in his pocket, and saying
to himself very decidedly that he could bear the vexations of home no
longer--he would go and seek his fortune, setting up his stick at the
crossways and bending his steps the way it fell. But by the time he got
to Stoniton, the thought of his mother and Seth, left behind to endure
everything without him, became too importunate, and his resolution
failed him. He came back the next day, but the misery and terror his
mother had gone through in those two days had haunted her ever since.

"No!" Adam said to himself to-night, "that must never happen again. It
'ud make a poor balance when my doings are cast up at the last, if my
poor old mother stood o' the wrong side. My back's broad enough and
strong enough; I should be no better than a coward to go away and leave
the troubles to be borne by them as aren't half so able. 'They that are
strong ought to bear the infirmities of those that are weak, and not to
please themselves.' There's a text wants no candle to show't; it shines
by its own light. It's plain enough you get into the wrong road i' this
life if you run after this and that only for the sake o' making things
easy and pleasant to yourself. A pig may poke his nose into the trough
and think o' nothing outside it; but if you've got a man's heart and
soul in you, you can't be easy a-making your own bed an' leaving the
rest to lie on the stones. Nay, nay, I'll never slip my neck out o' the
yoke, and leave the load to be drawn by the weak uns. Father's a sore
cross to me, an's likely to be for many a long year to come. What then?
I've got th' health, and the limbs, and the sperrit to bear it."

At this moment a smart rap, as if with a willow wand, was given at the
house door, and Gyp, instead of barking, as might have been expected,
gave a loud howl. Adam, very much startled, went at once to the door
and opened it. Nothing was there; all was still, as when he opened it
an hour before; the leaves were motionless, and the light of the stars
showed the placid fields on both sides of the brook quite empty of
visible life. Adam walked round the house, and still saw nothing except
a rat which darted into the woodshed as he passed. He went in again,
wondering; the sound was so peculiar that the moment he heard it it
called up the image of the willow wand striking the door. He could not
help a little shudder, as he remembered how often his mother had told
him of just such a sound coming as a sign when some one was dying. Adam
was not a man to be gratuitously superstitious, but he had the blood of
the peasant in him as well as of the artisan, and a peasant can no
more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help
trembling when he sees a camel. Besides, he had that mental combination
which is at once humble in the region of mystery and keen in the region
of knowledge: it was the depth of his reverence quite as much as
his hard common sense which gave him his disinclination to doctrinal
religion, and he often checked Seth's argumentative spiritualism by
saying, "Eh, it's a big mystery; thee know'st but little about it." And
so it happened that Adam was at once penetrating and credulous. If a
new building had fallen down and he had been told that this was a divine
judgment, he would have said, "May be; but the bearing o' the roof and
walls wasn't right, else it wouldn't ha' come down"; yet he believed
in dreams and prognostics, and to his dying day he bated his breath a
little when he told the story of the stroke with the willow wand. I
tell it as he told it, not attempting to reduce it to its natural
elements--in our eagerness to explain impressions, we often lose our
hold of the sympathy that comprehends them.

But he had the best antidote against imaginative dread in the necessity
for getting on with the coffin, and for the next ten minutes his hammer
was ringing so uninterruptedly, that other sounds, if there were any,
might well be overpowered. A pause came, however, when he had to take
up his ruler, and now again came the strange rap, and again Gyp howled.
Adam was at the door without the loss of a moment; but again all was
still, and the starlight showed there was nothing but the dew-laden
grass in front of the cottage.

Adam for a moment thought uncomfortably about his father; but of late
years he had never come home at dark hours from Treddleston, and
there was every reason for believing that he was then sleeping off his
drunkenness at the "Waggon Overthrown." Besides, to Adam, the conception
of the future was so inseparable from the painful image of his father
that the fear of any fatal accident to him was excluded by the deeply
infixed fear of his continual degradation. The next thought that
occurred to him was one that made him slip off his shoes and tread
lightly upstairs, to listen at the bedroom doors. But both Seth and his
mother were breathing regularly.

Adam came down and set to work again, saying to himself, "I won't open
the door again. It's no use staring about to catch sight of a sound.
Maybe there's a world about us as we can't see, but th' ear's quicker
than the eye and catches a sound from't now and then. Some people think
they get a sight on't too, but they're mostly folks whose eyes are not
much use to 'em at anything else. For my part, I think it's better to
see when your perpendicular's true than to see a ghost."

Such thoughts as these are apt to grow stronger and stronger as daylight
quenches the candles and the birds begin to sing. By the time the red
sunlight shone on the brass nails that formed the initials on the lid of
the coffin, any lingering foreboding from the sound of the willow
wand was merged in satisfaction that the work was done and the promise
redeemed. There was no need to call Seth, for he was already moving
overhead, and presently came downstairs.

"Now, lad," said Adam, as Seth made his appearance, "the coffin's done,
and we can take it over to Brox'on, and be back again before half after
six. I'll take a mouthful o' oat-cake, and then we'll be off."

The coffin was soon propped on the tall shoulders of the two brothers,
and they were making their way, followed close by Gyp, out of the little
woodyard into the lane at the back of the house. It was but about a mile
and a half to Broxton over the opposite slope, and their road wound very
pleasantly along lanes and across fields, where the pale woodbines and
the dog-roses were scenting the hedgerows, and the birds were twittering
and trilling in the tall leafy boughs of oak and elm. It was a strangely
mingled picture--the fresh youth of the summer morning, with its
Edenlike peace and loveliness, the stalwart strength of the two brothers
in their rusty working clothes, and the long coffin on their shoulders.
They paused for the last time before a small farmhouse outside the
village of Broxton. By six o'clock the task was done, the coffin nailed
down, and Adam and Seth were on their way home. They chose a shorter
way homewards, which would take them across the fields and the brook in
front of the house. Adam had not mentioned to Seth what had happened in
the night, but he still retained sufficient impression from it himself
to say, "Seth, lad, if Father isn't come home by the time we've had our
breakfast, I think it'll be as well for thee to go over to Treddles'on
and look after him, and thee canst get me the brass wire I want. Never
mind about losing an hour at thy work; we can make that up. What dost
say?"

"I'm willing," said Seth. "But see what clouds have gathered since we
set out. I'm thinking we shall have more rain. It'll be a sore time for
th' haymaking if the meadows are flooded again. The brook's fine and
full now: another day's rain 'ud cover the plank, and we should have to
go round by the road."

They were coming across the valley now, and had entered the pasture
through which the brook ran.

"Why, what's that sticking against the willow?" continued Seth,
beginning to walk faster. Adam's heart rose to his mouth: the vague
anxiety about his father was changed into a great dread. He made no
answer to Seth, but ran forward preceded by Gyp, who began to bark
uneasily; and in two moments he was at the bridge.

This was what the omen meant, then! And the grey-haired father, of whom
he had thought with a sort of hardness a few hours ago, as certain to
live to be a thorn in his side was perhaps even then struggling with
that watery death! This was the first thought that flashed through
Adam's conscience, before he had time to seize the coat and drag out
the tall heavy body. Seth was already by his side, helping him, and
when they had it on the bank, the two sons in the first moment knelt and
looked with mute awe at the glazed eyes, forgetting that there was need
for action--forgetting everything but that their father lay dead before
them. Adam was the first to speak.

"I'll run to Mother," he said, in a loud whisper. "I'll be back to thee
in a minute."

Poor Lisbeth was busy preparing her sons' breakfast, and their porridge
was already steaming on the fire. Her kitchen always looked the pink of
cleanliness, but this morning she was more than usually bent on making
her hearth and breakfast-table look comfortable and inviting.

"The lads 'ull be fine an' hungry," she said, half-aloud, as she stirred
the porridge. "It's a good step to Brox'on, an' it's hungry air o'er
the hill--wi' that heavy coffin too. Eh! It's heavier now, wi' poor Bob
Tholer in't. Howiver, I've made a drap more porridge nor common this
mornin'. The feyther 'ull happen come in arter a bit. Not as he'll ate
much porridge. He swallers sixpenn'orth o' ale, an' saves a hap'orth o'
por-ridge--that's his way o' layin' by money, as I've told him many a
time, an' am likely to tell him again afore the day's out. Eh, poor mon,
he takes it quiet enough; there's no denyin' that."

But now Lisbeth heard the heavy "thud" of a running footstep on the
turf, and, turning quickly towards the door, she saw Adam enter, looking
so pale and overwhelmed that she screamed aloud and rushed towards him
before he had time to speak.

"Hush, Mother," Adam said, rather hoarsely, "don't be frightened.
Father's tumbled into the water. Belike we may bring him round again.
Seth and me are going to carry him in. Get a blanket and make it hot as
the fire."

In reality Adam was convinced that his father was dead but he knew there
was no other way of repressing his mother's impetuous wailing grief than
by occupying her with some active task which had hope in it.

He ran back to Seth, and the two sons lifted the sad burden in
heart-stricken silence. The wide-open glazed eyes were grey, like
Seth's, and had once looked with mild pride on the boys before whom
Thias had lived to hang his head in shame. Seth's chief feeling was awe
and distress at this sudden snatching away of his father's soul; but
Adam's mind rushed back over the past in a flood of relenting and pity.
When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness
that we repent of, but our severity.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Adam reaches the cottage where he lives with his brother and their elderly parents. His mother tells him that his father, who is apparently an irresponsible alcoholic, has wandered off to a tavern in the next town, Treddleston, instead of making a coffin which he had contracted to finish that day. Adam is very angry and sets about doing the job without even eating supper. Seth comes home saddened by Dinah's refusal of his proposal, and Adam will not allow him to help with the coffin. Seth tries to soothe their mother, and it comes out in the conversation between them that Adam is in love with a girl named Hetty Sorrel, who is a silly thing, pretty but naive and impractical. After praying together, Seth and Lisbeth go to bed. Adam stays up all night to finish the coffin. About midnight, he hears a tapping on the door, but no one is there; he is reminded of a local superstition which holds that this occurrence is a sign of death. It happens again, but he pushes the superstition out of his mind. Soon after dawn, he and Seth deliver the completed coffin, and as they are walking home, they catch sight of a body in the brook near their home. It is their father; he has fallen into the brook in a drunken stupor and drowned. They carry him home, and Adam regrets his past harshness to his father.