As the days grew longer and the weather milder, Taffy and his father
worked late into the evenings; sometimes, if the job needed to be
finished, by the light of a couple of candles.
One evening, about nine o'clock, the boy as he planed a bench paused
suddenly. "What's that?"
They listened. The door stood open, and after a second or two they
heard the sound of feet tiptoeing away up the path outside.
"Spies, perhaps," said his father. "If so, let them go in peace."
But he was not altogether easy. There had been strange doings up at
the Bryanite Chapel of late. He still visited a few of his
parishioners regularly--hill farmers and their wives for the most
part, who did not happen to be tenants of Squire Moyle, and on whom
his visits therefore could bring no harm; and one or two had hinted
of strange doings, now that the Bryanites had hold of the old Squire.
They themselves had been up--just to look; they confessed it
shamefacedly, much in the style of men who have been drinking
overnight. Without pressing them and showing himself curious, the
Vicar could get at no particulars. But as the summer grew he felt a
moral sultriness, as it were, growing with it. The people were off
their balance, restless; and behind their behaviour he had a sense,
now of something electric, menacing, now of a hand holding it in
check. Slowly in those days the conviction deepened in him that he
was an alien on this coast, that between him and the hearts of the
race he ministered to there stretched an impalpable, impenetrable
veil.
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