None of your college-bred men had ever taught in that parish. The
schoolmaster was just a plain, old-fashioned farmer, who was
self-taught. He was a capable man who could manage a hundred
children single-handed. For thirty years and more he had been the
only teacher there, and was looked up to by everybody. The
schoolmaster seemed to feel that the spiritual welfare of the
entire congregation rested with him, and was therefore quite
concerned at their having called a parson who was no kind of a
preacher. However, he held his peace as long as it was only a
question of introducing a new form of baptism, and elsewhere at
that; but on learning that there had also been some changes in the
administration of the Holy Communion and that people were beginning
to gather in private homes to partake of the Sacrament, he could no
longer remain passive. Although a poor man himself, he managed to
persuade some of the leading citizens to raise the money to build a
mission house. "You know me," he said to them. "I only want to
preach in order to strengthen people in the old faith. What would
be the natural result if the lay preachers were to come upon us,
with their new baptism and their new Sacrament, if there were no
one to tell the people what was the true doctrine and what the
false?"

The schoolmaster was as well liked by the clergyman as by every one
else. He and the parson were frequently seen strolling together
along the road between the schoolhouse and the parsonage, back and
forth, back and forth, as if they had no end of things to say to
each other. The parson would often drop in at the schoolmaster's of
an evening to sit in the cozy kitchen by an open fire and chat with
the schoolmaster's wife, Mother Stina. At times he came night after
night. He had a dreary time of it at home; his wife was always