“Dear friends,” she said at last, “brothers and sisters, whom I love as those for whom my Lord has died, believe me, I know what this great blessedness is; and because I know it, I want you to have it too.  I am poor, like you:  I have to get my living with my hands; but no lord nor lady can be so happy as me, if they haven’t got the love of God in their souls.  Think what it is—­not to hate anything but sin; to be full of love to every creature; to be frightened at nothing; to be sure that all things will turn to good; not to mind pain, because it is our Father’s will; to know that nothing—­no, not if the earth was to be burnt up, or the waters come and drown us—­nothing could part us from God who loves us, and who fills our souls with peace and joy, because we are sure that whatever he wills is holy, just, and good.

“Dear friends, come and take this blessedness; it is offered to you; it is the good news that Jesus came to preach to the poor.  It is not like the riches of this world, so that the more one gets the less the rest can have.  God is without end; his love is without end—­”

     Its streams the whole creation reach,
     So plenteous is the store;
     Enough for all, enough for each,
     Enough for evermore.

Dinah had been speaking at least an hour, and the reddening light of the parting day seemed to give a solemn emphasis to her closing words.  The stranger, who had been interested in the course of her sermon as if it had been the development of a drama—­for there is this sort of fascination in all sincere unpremeditated eloquence, which opens to one the inward drama of the speaker’s emotions—­now turned his horse aside and pursued his way, while Dinah said, “Let us sing a little, dear friends”; and as he was still winding down the slope, the voices of the Methodists reached him, rising and falling in that strange blending of exultation and sadness which belongs to the cadence of a hymn.

Chapter III

After the Preaching

In less than an hour from that time, Seth Bede was walking by Dinah’s side along the hedgerow-path that skirted the pastures and green corn-fields which lay between the village and the Hall Farm.  Dinah had taken off her little Quaker bonnet again, and was holding it in her hands that she might have a freer enjoyment of the cool evening twilight, and Seth could see the expression of her face quite clearly as he walked by her side, timidly revolving something he wanted to say to her.  It was an expression of unconscious placid gravity—­of absorption in thoughts that had no connection with the present moment or with her own personality—­an expression that is most of all discouraging to a lover.  Her very walk was discouraging:  it had that quiet elasticity that asks for no support.  Seth felt this dimly; he said to himself, “She’s too good and holy for any man, let alone me,” and the words he had been summoning rushed back again