‘She’s wasting away before my eyes, Reverend,’ he answered, sorrow etched deeply in his face. ‘Since Father died she’s lost the will to live. She just sits on his side of the settle beyond the door and stares at nothing. It’s all I can do to get her to eat a crumb. I know you’ve tried your best to help, Reverend, organising the village women and Mrs Tregonning here to clean the cottage and cook meals for the little ones. But it can’t go on for ever. The children need a woman to look after them properly and I’m hardly of an age to get married. I’m getting desperate to know what to do. I realise you must get a lot of people looking for help following the mine accident and you must be very busy, but I was hoping you might be able to get through to Mother somehow. Encourage her to get out and about, be more her old self again.’

The Reverend sighed soft and slow. ‘I will go down to see her later in the day, Bartholomew, and of course I will do my best to lift her spirits, but I feel she needs help from a higher level than we can provide for her now.’

‘God, you mean,’ Bartholomew said blandly, his eyes alighting on a Bible.

‘Yes, I do. Your mother needs to be held constantly before God in prayer. The more prayer, the more chance there will be of her breaking out of her despair.’

‘You really believe that, don’t you?’ Bartholomew said, eyeing the parson suspiciously while tapping the Bible. ‘And what it says in here? I know what’s written in it, my mother used to teach me to read it.’

‘Of course. Why are you surprised? I am a minister of God.’

‘The few other clergymen I’ve come across are ministers only unto themselves, their greed and their perversions. I had not expected to find one who really believed in what he preaches. Perhaps if more of them were like you then people wouldn’t need to form a new sort of church outside the church.’

‘By that I take it you are referring to the people that are called Methodists, but John Wesley has no desire to start another church. Do you not approve of the Bible classes on Lancavel Downs, Bartholomew?’

‘I don’t feel the need to pursue the clamour for a new ideology and I sometimes wonder if it’s the Wesleys or Matthias Renfree people follow rather than God.’