66 FIELD AND HEDGEROW. 
we shall go acorning ’—a clear survival of the belief in 
transmigration, for he who is eaten by a pig becomes a 
pig, and goeth forth with swine to eat acorns. 
There had been some very strong language and 
straightforward observations at the chapel meetings, the 
private vestry of the managers; the elder being one of 
the founders, and his name on the deed could not be 
excluded—gall and wormwood—without his signature 
nothing could be done. Bitterer still, the chapel was 
heavily in debt to him. Had he chosen, in American: 
phrase, he could have ‘shut up the shebang in mighty 
sudden time’ The elder was tall; the elder was 
strong; the elder was grim; the elder was a man who 
could rule hundreds of the roughest labourers ; the elder: 
was a man who would have his say, and said it like 
throwing down a hod full of bricks. With the irresist- 
ible logic of figures and documents he demonstrated the 
pastor to be a liar, and told him so to his face. With 
the same engines he proved that two or three of the 
other managers were hypocrites, and told them so. 
Neither could pastor nor managers refute it, but stood 
like sheep. Then he told them what he had done for 
the chapel and for its minister, and no one could deny 
him. Indeed, the minister had been heard to weakly 
confess that the elder had once been a good friend to 
him. Perhaps his partisans, as is often the case, had 
taken up the pastor's cause with more violence than he 
himself desired, and by their vehemence had driven him 
into a position which he himself would have avoided. 
Most likely he would have made peace himself ; but the 
blot on all chapel systems of government is that the 
minister is but the mouthpiece of his congregation. 
Having thrown down his load of bricks thump, the 
elder stalked out with his memoranda and with his 
