The divvil says, “You sahn’t,”
An’ man says, “You can’t,
It’s ower big a job for lahtle fooaks like you.
But t’ Maister says, “You sall,”
An’ seea say we all,
For what t’ Maister says, you knoa, is sartain te be true!”
Old Adam went about his work full of the new idea, and we may depend upon it that Balaam’s back was, as truly as the borders of Brook Jabbok or the house-top at Joppa, the place of prayer, and that Beechwood Pasture witnessed that day the pleadings of one whose name was not only Adam Olliver, but “Israel, for as a prince had he power with God to prevail.”
The sun was sinking in the West, flooding the evening landscape with a mellow glory, reddening the foliage of the hoary beech-trees until they seemed to be a-glow with mystic fire, concentrating its beams upon, here and there, a window in distant Nestleton, which flashed back like a mimic luminary, while Nestleton Mere, just above the white-washed, odd-built water-mill, shone like burnished silver flushed with crimson, beneath the cloudless sky. The feathered choristers had not yet gone to their repose, and tree, copse, and hedgerow were vocal with their vesper hymns, as Adam Olliver, having disposed of his toppers and repaired the gaps, was jogging homeward on his imperturbable donkey, after the labours of the day.
Jabez Hepton, the village carpenter, and two of his apprentices, returning from their labours at a distant farmhouse, overtook him as he was communing, according to his wont, with his four-footed retainer.
“Balaam,” said he, “we sall hev a chapel at Nestleton”—though how that fact should concern his uncomprehending companion it is difficult to see. In all probability the promise of a few carrots or a quartern of oats would have been far more acceptable information, for, like many other donkeys we wot of, Balaam’s preferences were all in favour of carnal pleasures.