"Greta? It doesn't sound like one of the names hereabouts. Who is she, Gabriel?"
"Greta Rotherson. She lives at the corn-mill in Hazel Dene."
"What? Is some one running the old mill again? It was standing when I left here last year."
"Yes; Miller Rotherson came from the low country in the spring, saw the mill, and bought it out of hand. You should hit it off, you and he; many's the time I've sought to save his soul alive, but he always has the one answer. 'Give it up, Mr. Hirst,' says he. 'Some men were made to take religion, as your saying is, and some were not; and there's about the end of it. I don't need it, and I couldn't take it if I tried from now till Doomsday.'"
Griff smiled; he recognized a kindred spirit.
"Did you ever try to convert the daughter?" he asked, after a pause.
Again the preacher flushed, and the lines on his face deepened.
"I've been thinking that over, and it seems as though that fit of mine was not a matter of yesterday, nor the day before nor the day before that. It's been coming on a long while, Griff, though I never guessed it till I saw her, winsome as a fairy, paddling in the beck. I did try to convert her, just once; but the words wouldn't come, and when she laughed, with a kind of coo at the tail of her voice, I fell soft and hadn't the heart to upbraid her. Ay, Griff, it's been coming this long while."
"And the best thing that has come to you since you were born," cried Lomax, cheerily. "What with the girl, and enough to eat, and a rap over the knuckles now and then from me—for old times' sake, you know—we'll make a moor man of you yet, Gabriel. Do you ever feel the swish of a gale making you drunk?"
For a moment the preacher yielded to that storm-suggestion; his whole face lit up, his eyes sparkled.