“‘Amen!’ cried Israel, ‘if it only were His will that she should come ten yards higher up, she would be on the very roadside. Then I would open a door into the hold of her after the coal is out, and you and I, Jacob, could rig up seats and windows like a proper Tabernacle—fit for Mr. Whitefield himself to preach in! Truly the service of the Lord is joyful. His law doth rejoice the heart.’
“So said Israel, and, just as I am tellin’ you, there came a great inward swirling of the tide, a very merracle, and lo! the Tabernacle was laid down as by compass alongside the Nitwood road, whence she will never stir till the day of Final Judgment, as the scripture is. And Israel, he cuts the door, and Jacob, he gets out the coals and sells them to the great folk, and the supervisor, he stands by, watching in vain till he was as black as a sweep, for the brandy that was not there. But he petitioned Government that Israel should have a concession of that part of the foreshore—being against all smuggling and maybe thinking to have him as a sort of spiritual exciseman.
“Yes, Mr. Lyon,” Boyd went on, gratified by the interest in his tale, “’tis wonderful, when you think on’t. Empty from stem to stern she is, with skylights in her deck and windows in her side! Why, there are benches for the men and a pulpit for Israel. As for Jacob, he has nothing but his tuning-fork and a seat with the rest.
“And indeed there’s more chance that Israel will put a stop to the Free-trading than all the preventives in the land. He preaches against it, declaring that it makes the young men fit for nothing else, like every other way of making money without working for it.”
“Ah, Israel’s right there!” came from my grandfather.
“But every light has its shadow, and he’s made a failure of it with Dick Wilkes, and may do the like with my wife, Bridget.
“For Bridget, she will be for ever crying at me these days, ‘Here, you Tabernacle man, have you split the kindling wood?’ Or ‘No praise-the-Lord for you, lad, till your day’s work is done! Go and mend that spring-cart of the General’s that his man has been grumbling about for a month!’
“And sometimes I have to fill my mouth with the hundred and twenty-first psalm to keep from answering improper, and after all, Bridget will only ask if I don’t know the tune to that owld penny ballad. ’Tis true enough about the tune” (Boyd confessed), “me having no pitch-pipe, but Bridget has no business to miscall scripture, whether said or sung!
“As to Dick Wilkes, that got his lame leg at the attack on—well, we need not go opening up old scores, but we all know where—has been staying with us, and that maybe made Bridget worse. Aye, that he has. There’s no one like Bridget for drawing all the riff-raff of the countryside about her—I know some will say that comes of marrying me. But ’tis the ould gennleman’s own falsehood. You’ll always find Boyd Connoway in the company of his betters whenever so be he can!
“But Dick Wilkes had our ‘ben’ room, and there were a little, light, active man that came to see him—not that I know much of him, save from the sound of voices and my wife Bridget on the watch to keep me in the kitchen, and all that.