"And the man's mother not much more than cold in her grave-clothes!" she thought.
BOOK III
CHAPTER I
MYSTERY
The company at 'The Corner House' had divided into two groups, and each was concerned with a separate subject. Mr. Shillabeer himself, with Bartley Crocker, Mr. Moses, Simon Snell, and Bart Stanbury, discussed a strange phenomenon that had of late startled the dwellers at Sheepstor; while, with their backs to this throng, Ernest Maunder, his friend Timothy Mattacott, and Billy Screech whispered together upon a private problem.
"The thing can be explained in a word," said Moses; "there be amongst us some high-minded, religious creature that have got hold of this way of advertising the Truth. He have said to himself, 'There's nought like a gate to catch the eye of the passer-by.' And so, where a gate happens to stand by the wayside, he have gone by night and painted up a Bible truth. Farmer Chave found 'Prepare to meet thy God' on his bullock byre yesterday morning, and there's 'Eternity'--just that one solemn word--on every second gate betwixt here and Meavy."
"He's come out our way, too, since last week," said Bart Stanbury. "There be a text up over on the moor-gate above our house: 'Now is the accepted time.'"
Young Stanbury was courting a girl at Nosworthy Farm, near his home, and this text, staring out of the dawn-lit desert, had come to him with the force of a direct command. But he made no mention of its private significance in his affairs.
"The party means well enough," declared Hartley. "There's no doubt about that. And it can't be denied that coming upon these solemn things all of a sudden makes men and women think. The puzzle is to know who's doing it."
"Some of the people that own the gates don't like it, however," said Simon Snell. "Farmer Bassett, out to Yellowmead, says 'tis a form of trespass and battery to write on a man's gatepost; and it don't bring you any more within the law because you write up Scripture. The man stuck up 'Let there be light' on Mr. Bassett's big gate--the one going into his four-acre field--and Bassett was cruel vexed and said as how he'd let light into the chap himself if ever he caught him."