In a Quiet Village

by S. Baring-Gould

And to this he lent himself. He had not sought it. It was forced upon him. It might do good, he argued; it could do no harm. So his fame grew, and he was regarded with reverential awe. Whether he believed in his own efficacy as a healer, I cannot say; his gifts of healing were bruited about, his failures passed into the limbo of oblivion. He did not set store on his reputed powers, he rather disparaged them, or shrugged his shoulders and professed scepticism over them, and he always said: “Well, if good comes of it, it is not from me—you must know that—but from the great Healer of all. Some cures wi’ drugs, and some wi’ their touch. There are differences of administration.”

Dan’l Coombe was a regular churchgoer.

Woe betide the parson if, in preaching without a book, he quoted Scripture inaccurately. He became in time accustomed to find the tailor standing at the foot of the church steps awaiting him after service. Then would come the familiar touch of the hat, and, “I beg your pardon, sir, but did you not put in a the where there oughtn’t to be, in that there text from St. Paul to the Corinthians?”

Or else: “Please, sir, did you use the right word in that there quotation from the Acts?”

“Dear Mr. Coombe, I took the marginal rendering.”

“Oh, the margin. I don’t hold by that.”

Mr. Coombe was very much perplexed when the new version of the Scriptures was issued. It happily was not read in the parish church. I verily believe it would have driven him from it. “Nasty, lumpy thing,” he said; “it is like eatin’ bad-made porridge. Nothin’ smooth about it. Bits come in your mouth and teeth at every moment.”

He resented it as an immoral thing. “And to think,” said he, “that Christian money should ha’ been spent by Government out of our pockets to put this here stumbling-block in the way of the blind! It’s wicked, and I’ll vote against Government next ’lection.”

As already said, there had been an attempt made by scaling to peer in at the holes in Coombe’s shutter, to see him at his nightly occupation. It had failed. After that he pasted two pieces of oiled paper over the openings, and thus prevented any further observations being made.

So time went on, and his neighbours became accustomed to the two yellow eyes, and no longer actively concerned themselves about his doings, though still a good deal of puzzlement remained about his nightly doings.