nothing to do with church matters except on Sunday, and she even went
so far as to neglect to send for the rector when one of her children
lay dying. She was attacked for the omission, but she defended
herself.

'What was the use when the poor dear was only seven year old? What
call was there for him to come to a blessed innocent like that? I
did tell him to look in when my husband was took, for I know as
before we were married there was something atween him and that gal
Sanders. He never would own up to me about it, and I thought as he
might to a clergyman, and, if he did, it would ease his mind and make
it a bit better for him afterwards; but, Lord! it warn't no use, for
he went off and we didn't so much as hear her name, not even when he
was a-wandering. I says to myself when the parson left, "What's the
good of having you?"'

Mrs Caffyn was a Christian, but she was a disciple of St James rather
than of St Paul. She believed, of course, the doctrines of the
Catechism, in the sense that she denied none, and would have assented
to all if she had been questioned thereon; but her belief that
'faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone,' was something
very vivid and very practical.

Her estimate, too, of the relative values of the virtues and of the
relative sinfulness of sins was original, and the rector therefore
told all his parishioners that she was little better than a heathen.
The common failings in that part of the country amongst the poor were
Saturday-night drunkenness and looseness in the relations between the
young men and young women. Mrs Caffyn's indignation never rose to
the correct boiling point against these crimes. The rector once