"Look here, Mrs. Thorpe; I've brought you something else which you won't like quite so much as that scrap of paper; but which I fancied you might be pleased to have, for I remembered that you once told me that you valued it." And he held out her locket.
"Why, it has come back to me again!" cried Meg. "The first time it was stolen; and Barnabas moved to repentance the poor girl who took it; but this time, I sold it of my own free will, and——"
"And I moved no one to repentance," said George. "I can't compete with the preacher; I paid over the counter. His was the more excellent way!"
Meg drew back a step. Whenever she felt most kindly to Mr. Sauls something in his tone jarred on her. It had been so in her girlhood; it was so now.
"There is no question of competition," she said. "Shall we try to find Barnabas? Oh! there he is."
He was coming towards them across the field; but he did not at first see Mr. Sauls, who was in the shadow.
George would have preferred to meet Meg's husband when Meg was not by; but he stood his ground. He was not going to be driven away by the fellow, much as he disliked him.
He had often said to himself that it was more than possible that the canting humbug ill-treated the woman he had stolen. Such a belief would justify any amount of hatred; but he knew it to be untenable when he saw the expression of the preacher's eyes as they turned to Meg.
He ought, logically, to have hated the preacher less in consequence; but, on the contrary, a tingling sensation assailed his foot; he wanted to kick the man with a longing the fierceness of which surprised himself. Mr. Sauls was a highly sophisticated product of a rather artificial age; but certain primitive instincts have an astonishing way of asserting themselves at times.
"Barnabas, this is Mr. Sauls, who has brought me a letter from my father," said Meg. She felt a slight uneasiness while making the introduction; the two men were so thoroughly antipathetical. But she had great trust in the preacher's instinct of hospitality, and in Mr. Sauls' savoir faire. She was not in the least prepared for what followed. The preacher's countenance changed when he looked at her visitor.