"We cried for ourselves I warrant you. We was terrible upset about it, and I properly gnashed my teeth I remember. Savage I was, and loved to hear father damn to hell the nurse that had done the mischief. 'Douglas Champernowne' the poor child was called. My mother doted on high-sounding names. And the day he was buried, my sister and me roamed on the moor again in our black after the funeral, bewailing our loss; and it was Milly that called my mind to our stone god, for I'd forgot all about him just then. 'There he is—aglaring and agrinning!' she said, and I looked up and saw we'd come to him without thinking. It had been raining all day, and his face was wet and agleam in evening sunlight. We liked him that way, but now I turned my hate on him and cursed him for a hard-hearted, cruel devil. 'Beast—hookem-snivey beast!' I yelled up at the tor; 'and I wish to God I was strong enough to pull you down and smash your face in!' Milly trembled with fear and put her arms around me, to save me, or die with me if need be. But I told her the idol couldn't hurt us. 'He can only kill babbies,' I yelled at him. Then I worked myself up into a proper passion and flung stones and mud at the rock, and Milly, finding our god helpless, egged me on. We made faces and spat on the earth and did everything our wits could hit on to insult him. Then, tired out, we turned our backs on him, and the last he heard was my little sister giving him the nastiest cut of all. 'We be going back to Gentle Jesus now,' screamed Milly."
Maynard ceased and lighted his pipe.
"It's a sad, lovely story. I don't wonder you come and have a look at the face sometimes. So shall I now. May I tell it again?" asked Dinah.
"No, miss, don't do that—I'd rather none heard it for the present. I've my reasons for not wishing to be linked up with these parts."
"Call me 'Dinah,' and let me call you 'Lawrence,'" she said. From her this was not a startling suggestion. Indeed she had already called him "Lawrence" sometimes.
"If you like," he answered. "It's easier. We see a good many things the same."
"I suppose we do. And did you and Milly go back to 'Gentle Jesus'?"
"Certainly we did; and I'll make bold to say she never left Him no more."
"But you—you ain't exactly a Christian man, are you? When did you change?"
He looked into the past and did not answer for a moment.