‘How did that fellow get his name, Tregarva?’
‘Oh, most of them have nicknames round here. Some of them hardly know their own real names, sir.’ (‘A sure sign of low civilisation,’ thought Lancelot.) ‘But he got his a foolish way; and yet it was the ruin of him. When he was a boy of fifteen, he got miching away in church-time, as boys will, and took off his clothes to get in somewhere here in this very river, groping in the banks after craw-fish; and as the devil—for I can think no less—would have it, a big one catches hold of him by the fingers with one claw, and a root with the other, and holds him there till Squire Lavington comes out to take his walk after church, and there he caught the boy, and gave him a thrashing there and then, naked as he stood. And the story got wind, and all the chaps round called him Crawy ever afterwards, and the poor fellow got quite reckless from that day, and never looked any one in the face again; and being ashamed of himself, you see, sir, was never ashamed of anything else—and there he is. That dog’s his only friend, and gets a livelihood for them both. It’s growing old now; and when it dies, he’ll starve.’
‘Well—the world has no right to blame him for not doing his duty, till it has done its own by him a little better.’
‘But the world will, sir, because it hates its duty, and cries all day long, like Cain, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”’
‘Do you think it knows its duty? I have found it easy enough to see that something is diseased, Tregarva; but to find the medicine first, and to administer it afterwards, is a very different matter.’
‘Well—I suppose the world will never be mended till the day of judgment.’
‘In plain English, not mended till it is destroyed. Hopeful for the poor world! I should fancy, if I believed that, that the devil in the old history—which you believe—had had the best of it with a vengeance, when he brought sin into the world, and ruined it. I dare not believe that. How dare you, who say that God sent His Son into the world to defeat the devil?’
Tregarva was silent a while.
‘Learning and the Gospel together ought to do something, sir, towards mending it. One would think so. But the prophecies are against that.’
‘As folks happen to read them just now. A hundred years hence they may be finding the very opposite meaning in them. Come, Tregarva,—Suppose I teach you a little of the learning, and you teach me a little of the Gospel—do you think we two could mend the world between us, or even mend Whitford Priors?’