or Janey. "Th' missis has sent to ax me to go an'—an' set wi' her a bit. I mun go, chaps. A man munna negleck his fam'ly."
In response to Mrs. Briarley's ratings and Janey's querulous appeals, it was his habit to shed tears copiously and with a touch of ostentation.
"I'm a poor chap, missus," he would say. "I'm a poor chap. Yo' cunnot be hard on me. I nivver wur good enow fur a woman loike yoursen. I should na wonder if I had to join th' teetotals after aw. Tha knows it allus rains o' Whit-Saturday, when they ha' their walk, an' that theer looks as if th' Almoighty wur on th' teetotal soide. It's noan loike he'd go to so mich trouble if he were na."
At such crises as these "th' women foak," as he called his wife and Janey, derived their greatest consolation from much going to chapel.
"If it wur na fur th' bit o' comfort I get theer," said the poor woman, "I should na know whether I wur standin' on my head or my heels—betwixt him, an' th' work, an' th' childer."
"Happen ye'd loike to go wi' us," said Janey to Murdoch, one day. Yo'll be sure to hear a good sermont."
Murdoch went with them, and sat in a corner of their free seat—a hard one, with a straight and unrelenting back. But he was not prevented by the seat from being interested and even absorbed by the doctrine. He had an absent-minded way of absorbing impressions, and the unemotional tenor of his life had left him singularly impartial. He did not finally decide that the sermon was good, bad, or indifferent, but he pondered on it and its probable effects deeply, and with no little curiosity. It was a long sermon, and one which "hit straight from
