in it, though none would have compared him in education with his nearest
friend, Richard Enraghty, who had been the schoolmaster and was now the
foremost of the United Brethren. He led their services in the Temple, and
sometimes preached for them when it came their turn to occupy the house
which they shared with the other sects. Hingston was a Methodist, but
perhaps because their sects were so akin in doctrine and polity their
difference made no division between the friends: Enraghty little and
fierce and restless, Hingston large and kind and calm. What they joined in
saying prevailed in questions of public interest; those who yielded to
their wisdom liked to believe that Enraghty's opinion ruled with Hingston.
Matthew Braile alone had the courage to disable their judgment which he
liked to say was no more infallible than so much Scripture, but the hardy
infidel, who knew so much law and was inexpugnable in his office, owned
that he could not make head against their gospel. He could darken their
counsel with citations from "Common Sense" and "The Age of Reason," but
the piety of the community remained safe from his mockery.

The large charity of Hingston covered the multitude of the Squire's sins;
he would have argued that he had not been understood perhaps in the worst
things he said; but the fiercer godliness of Enraghty was proof against
the talk of a man whose conversation was an exhalation from the Pit. He
had bitterly opposed Matthew Braile's successive elections; he had made
the pulpit of the Temple an engine of political warfare and had launched
its terrors against the invulnerable heathen. He was like Hingston in
looking for a sign; in that day of remoteness from any greater world the
people of the backwoods longed to feel themselves near the greatest world
of all, and well within the radius of its mysteries. They talked mostly of
these when they met together, and in the solitude of their fields they
dwelt upon them; on their week days and work days they turned over the
threats and promises of the Sabbath and expected a light or a voice from