Musgrave said, "Now, Thomas, come in, and I'll find you a pew," and the two entered a low room. The congregation was already collected. There were fierce faces, bronzed by wind and sun. There were quiet faces that bore the marks of thought and the memories of toil. The men were all rudely dressed, and the women wore the primitive clothing which for three hundred years past has served for the simple tastes of the villagers. After a pause of a few minutes, Walter Musgrave's tall figure loomed in the shadowy corner where the pulpit stood. A simple hymn was dictated and sung in strong nasal tones. The old man who led the singing prided himself upon the volume of sound which he could at any instant propel through his nose. Strangers were sometimes a little disconcerted by this feat, for it seemed as if some wholly new description of trumpet had been suddenly invented. This man of the trumpet voice was wont to close his eyes and turn his face towards the ceiling. When once the preliminary blast had been blown from his nostrils, no power on earth could stay the flood of song. He became oblivious of time and space and the congregation. Considerations as to harmony did not enter into his scheme of the universe. If he got flagrantly wrong, he simply coughed and took up the thread of the musical narrative where he left off. The congregation had a great notion of his powers. They considered that the terrific drone with which he opened a hymn could not be equalled in any church or in any chapel for twenty miles round.
Musgrave suffered a good deal under the storm of harmony, but he always bore it bravely, and, when possible, lent the aid of his own high, sweet tenor, to the nasal clamour. After the hymn came a short prayer, delivered as though the speaker really believed that his God was at hand, and would instantly listen to any petition humbly proffered by frail creatures. At the end of a short pause, Walter Musgrave stood up to speak. He broadened his chest and straightened himself, unconsciously hinting at his physical power. He then read his text in a low voice: "Why is life given to a man whose way is hid, and whom God hath hedged in?" Musgrave was an uneducated man, with strong logical instincts. Perhaps, had he been educated thoroughly, the poetic vein, which gave the chief charm to his mind and conversation, would have been destroyed. As it was, he invariably confined himself to logic so long as his emotions remained untouched; but there were moments when his blood seemed to catch fire, and he broke away from the calm reasoning which serves for placid men. He then spoke with poetry, and with an accent which affected the nerves of all who heard him. On this afternoon he began with a little sketch of the history of Job, and he then detailed his notion that the Arab, who wrote the most wonderful book in the world, was really the type of the modern man, and lived hundreds of generations before his time. He pointed out that all around us in Britain were men of deep thoughts, and wise thoughts, who had grown discontented with the world, and had set up their own intelligence in an endeavour to grasp the purpose of an intelligence infinitely higher. The existence of evil, the existence of pain, the existence of all the things that make men's pilgrimage, from dark to dark, mysterious and awful, can never be probed to any purpose by one creature created by the great Power who also created the mystery of pain and the problem of evil. Dwelling in the desert, and seeing day by day the movements of the world, and the strange progress of the stars, Job had grown to cherish the pride of intellect. So long as his prosperity was unbroken, he was contented, and busied himself day after day in relieving the wants of the poor and in succouring the oppressed. But when the blast of affliction blew upon him, his kindly disposition forsook him for a little, and he only thought of his own bitterness; he only thought of the puzzles that have faced every man who has a heart to feel since first our race appeared in this wondrous place. Musgrave thought that every man who has faith, every man whose heart has been torn by the wrenches of chance, must sympathize with the yearning of Job; but at the last every man, like Job, comes to see that there are things beyond our minds. Each of us learns that there are things before which our intelligence must be abashed, and that the only safe rule of life is to fall into the attitude of trust, and question no more. He felt it necessary to touch his homely hearers, and he said: "Only last week the wind woke from the sky, and the storm swept over the moor, and swept over this little place where two or three are now gathered together to worship. Many of our friends put forth in the morning in the joy of strength, in the pride of manhood, and no one of them fancied the sea that now fawns upon the shore would wake up into fury, and would dash its claws into cliff and sand, and rend the works of man into nothingness. We stood together on these cliffs—wives whose husbands were wrestling with the storm, mothers who were yearning for the sons they had borne. We saw the boats fight nearer and nearer through the mad spray and the tearing blasts. One after another we saw them crushed and sunken by the hand of the wind. Many of us went to our homes with bitterness at heart. We could not tell why those innocent men should have been snatched out of life; we could not tell why the innocent sufferers who remain should bear their sorrow through all the years until the release of death comes. Our thoughts were the thoughts that Job cherished in the black depths of his agony. But let me counsel you; let me ask you to remember that although death is here and pain is here—although every moment of our lives brings some new mystery—yet in the end there shall be peace. Our little sufferings count as nothing in the sum of the universe. The ills that we cry out against are only but as the troubles of children, and over all watches the Father who cared for Job in the desert, and who took to His own breast the souls of those who went down in the storm that crushed so many hopes of so many men and women in this our little village. I ask you only to trust. I give you no arguments. I only beg you to feel. Crush your questionings. Force yourself to believe in your own insignificance; force yourself to think that suffering has a wise end, and that even our pains, which are so great to us, are part of the scheme of a Master who is moulding the universe to His own plans. When once you have attained this central attitude of calm and trust, then for the rest of your life you will know nothing but joy. The thought of death will be no more like to the horror of a nightmare, but you will meet the great change even as you meet the deep black sleep of tired men. You will know, while thought remains, that you have not lived in vain, and you have not died in vain, for somewhere in God's providence there shall be rest for you, and immortal peace."
The thin frame of the speaker quivered as he spoke, and his long fingers writhed with a motion that gave emphasis to his ringing tones. Hob's Tommy had never heard anything like this before. He sat stupefied, and felt as though some music not heard of hitherto were playing and giving him gladness. The congregation broke up, and old William Dent said to one of his cronies, "Watty was grand this afternoon. Ay, they may talk about the fine preachers with the Greek and the Latin, but I want to hear a man like that." Musgrave and Hob's Tommy walked back over the moor in the twilight after the second service, and the giant spoke not a word all the way until they reached the bridge that crossed the little river. The dying twilight made the sluggish water like silver, and the trees were just beginning to moan with the evening wind. Tommy stood in the middle of the bridge, and looked—looked into the dark depths of the water, and then let his eye trace the silver path of the river where it vanished in the soft purple tints of the wood. He said, "If I was to drop over here now, Mr. Musgrave, do you think God would take me?" And Musgrave said—
"Don't talk nonsense, Thomas; come along with me. When God wants to take you, He will take you; but you must not be trying to put your opinions in place of God's. Turn back, my man, and look at the Point there where the Cobbler's Stone stands. Now forget that you are looking at the calm stream, and think what you would feel like one dark night, with a northerly gale, if you had to fight your way round the Cobbler, and expected the sea to double over your boat every minute. You are not in danger now, and your business is to worship. Try to think, my lad, what you would feel if you expected that every sea would be the last one. Now come away, and talk no more nonsense to-night."
So Hob's Tommy did not go trouting on that Sunday evening.
The next day, when he woke up, he had a sense of strangeness, and it suddenly flashed upon him that he ought to pray. He did not exactly know how to begin, but he managed to produce a curious imitation of the prayer he had heard Musgrave deliver the day before. He then put on his sea-boots and sou'-wester, and strolled into the kitchen. When his mother heard his foot in the passage, she trembled a little, because Tom was not over civil as a rule. To her utter astonishment, the ruffian whom she loved said, "Good morning, mother. Is the coffee ready?" He then stepped up to her, and placed his arm round her shoulders. He had never kissed anybody in his life; so that form of endearment did not occur to him; but he bent his bearded face, and laid his cheek clumsily against his mother's. The draggled woman was so startled that she was unable to form any idea as to the possible cause of this transformation. She only said, "Sit down, my bonny man, and your bacon will be ready for you in two minutes. I have never seen you look so well in my life. Will I be sending to the town for some bottled beer for you by the time you get back?"
"No, mother; I am going to try and do without the drink for a bit. I hit you last Saturday night, didn't I?"
"Well, don't speak about that, my bonny man."
"Show us the mark, mother."
She bared her arm to the shoulder, and there, sure enough, was a black bruise.