DR.

UPANDOWN The practice of Flamborough was to listen fairly to anything that might be said by any one truly of the native breed, and to receive it well into the crust of the mind, and let it sink down slowly.

But even after that, it might not take root, unless it were fixed in its settlement by their two great powers--the law, and the Lord.
They had many visitations from the Lord, as needs must be in such a very stormy place; whereas of the law they heard much less; but still they were even more afraid of that; for they never knew how much it might cost.
Balancing matters (as they did their fish, when the price was worth it, in Weigh Lane), they came to the set conclusion that the law and the Lord might not agree concerning the child cast among them by the latter.
A child or two had been thrown ashore before, and trouble once or twice had come of it; and this child being cast, no one could say how, to such a height above all other children, he was likely enough to bring a spell upon their boats, if anything crooked to God's will were done; and even to draw them to their last stocking, if anything offended the providence of law.
In any other place it would have been a point of combat what to say and what to do in such a case as this.

But Flamborough was of all the wide world happiest in possessing an authority to reconcile all doubts.

The law and the Lord--two powers supposed to be at variance always, and to share the week between them in proportions fixed by lawyers--the holy and unholy elements of man's brief existence, were combined in Flamborough parish in the person of its magisterial rector.