The primitive whitewashed structure it replaced had lasted long, and in the course of many generations time had clothed its moss-grown walls, its slated porch, and tombstones worn with rain in a certain beauty of congruity and association, linking it with the purple distances of the fells, and the brawling river bending round the gray enclosure.

But finally, after a period of quiet and gradual decay, the ruin of Long Whindale chapel had become a quick and hurrying ruin that would not be arrested.

When the rotten timbers of the roof came dropping on the farmers heads, and the oak benches beneath offered gaps, the geography of which had to be carefully learnt by the substantial persons who sat on them, lest they should be overtaken by undignified disaster; when the rain poured in on the Communion Table and the wind raged through innumerable mortarless chinks, even the slowly-moving folk of the valley came to the conclusion that 'summat 'ull hev to be deun.' And by the help of the Bishop and Queen Anne's Bounty, and what not, aided by just as many half-crowns as the valley found itself unable to defend against the encroachments of a new and 'moiderin' parson, 'summat' was done, whereof the results--namely, the new church, vicarage, and school-house--were now conspicuous.
This radical change, however, had not been the work of Mr.Thornburgh, but of his predecessor, a much more pushing and enterprising man, whose successful efforts to improve the church accommodation in Long Whindale had moved such deep and lasting astonishment in the mind of a somewhat lethargic bishop, that promotion had been readily found for him.

Mr.
Thornburgh was neither capable of the sturdy begging which had raised the church, nor was he likely on other lines to reach preferment.

He and his wife, who possessed much more salience of character than he, were accepted in the dale as belonging to the established order of things.
Nobody wished them any harm, and the few people they had specially befriended, naturally, thought well of them.
But the old intimacy of relation which had once subsisted between the clergyman of Long Whindale and his parishioners was wholly gone.