"I don't know," he said at last. "It's hard to tell sometimes when we change. Them that come to the penitent bench, or what not, know to an hour when they was 'saved,' as they call it; but them that have gone the other way, and heaved up anchor, and let their reason steer the ship and their faith go astern—such men can't always answer exactly when the change came. Sometimes it's just the mind getting bigger and the inner instinct dropping the earlier teaching; and sometimes things happen to shake a man for ever out of his hope and trust."
"A very sad thought," she said.
"It's always sad to see a thing fall down—whether it's a god or a tree. The sound of the woodman's axe be sad to some minds."
"It is to me," said Dinah.
He looked up at the features above them, carved on the mass of the tor. Beyond swung out Rippon's granite crown against the sky, and nearer stretched miles of wild and ragged heath. Then, in long, stone-broken curves the moor rose and fell across the western light to Honeybag and Chinkwell and huge Hameldown bathed in faint gold. The sun kneaded earth with its waning lustres until matter seemed imponderable and the wild land rolled in planes of immaterial radiance folding upon each other. The great passages of the hills and dales melted together under this ambient illumination and the stony foreground shone clear, where, through the hazes, a pool glinted among the lengthening shadows and reflected the sky. Quartz crystals glittered where the falling rays touched the rocks, and as the sun descended, great tracts of misty purple spread in the hollows and flung smooth carpets for the feet of night.
For a moment "Bloody" seemed to relax his brutal features in the glow. Sunset lit a smile upon the crag, and nature's monstrous sculpture appeared to close its eyes and bask in the fading warmth.
"It would be a pity if ever Hey Tor were thrown down, as I wanted to throw it, when I was that little angry boy," said Lawrence.
She put out her hand to him.
"Don't you fling over God," she said very earnestly.
"I hope never," he answered.