She came to chapel, because for a Christian Brother or Sister to go anywhere else would have been a confession of weakness in the face of other critical and observant communities--such, for instance, as the Calvinistic Methodists, or the Particular Baptists--not to be thought of for a moment.

But when he passed her, he got no greeting from her; she drew her skirts aside, and her stony eye looked beyond him, as though there were nothing on the road.

And the sharp-tongued things she said of him came round to him one by one.
Reuben, too, avoided the minister, who, a year or two before, had brought fountains of refreshing to his soul, and in the business of the chapel, of which he was still an elder, showed himself more inarticulate and confused than ever.

While David, who had won a corner in Mr.Ancrum's heart since the days of their first acquaintance at Sunday-school--David fled him altogether, and would have none of his counsel or his friendship.

The alienation of the Grieves made another and a bitter drop in the minister's rising cup of failure.
So the little web of motives and cross-motives, for the most part of the commonest earthiest hue, yet shot every here and there by a thread or two of heavenlier stuff, went spinning itself the winter through round the unknowing children.