But Monjoy’s own rage and remorse were so apparent, and he besought the parson so movingly for one minute in which he himself might restore order, that the parson cried, “I give you three minutes, then; but if so much as a whisper reaches my ears----” Monjoy was gone. Before the parson had fairly turned back, the engraver, coiner, forger, unlicensed smelter of metals, was in the clerk’s desk and Pim o’ Cuddy was pitched into the arms of the horde below. As he stood there, it was hardly too much to say of him that he looked a king, a barbarian king of some older time, who made laws with his eye and executed them with his hand.
There was a movement, every cap was removed, and Monjoy’s head moved arrogantly from side to side.
“Now. He who moves hand or foot settles with me. When the words ‘Let us pray’ are pronounced, you will kneel, and you will remain kneeling till the Amen. There’s none here who doesn’t know me; he doesn’t know me who doesn’t do this. When _my_ head bows and _my_ knee bends, by this house and its Master, yours shall!”
A moment longer he stood in the desk, and then left it amid such a silence that the calling of the sheep away by the dam could be heard. They fell from before him as he passed out of the church again; he reappeared alone at the altar, his back to the congregation. Presently Cicely and James Eastwood appeared, the parson following.
The now familiar service was brief. Obediently as children, docile and uncomprehending as children, Back o’ th’ Mooin knelt for the prayer. An Amen or two, well-nigh forgotten, rose to lips as the parson ceased; and then they rose again. The parson gave out a couple of verses of a hymn; only Pim o’ Cuddy and a few others sang it, but all stood in imitative attitudes of reverence, just as at the pieceboards they had imitated gestures of ridicule and derision. They passed out of the church and put on their caps again, and the chief actors entered the vestry where the registers were.
In the afternoon the sheep were shorn and turned off again up the Scout, where they bleated continually. The grey fleeces were stacked in James Eastwood’s yard, and a great drinking and carousing was toward in the “Gooise,” where the parlours and passages were so packed that the ale for the shearers had to be passed out of a window. The noise increased as the afternoon wore on. Mish Murgatroyd, Dick o’ Dean, and certain others, wishing to know what Cope the supervisor weighed, set him on a pair of wool-scales amid uproarious applause--six and a half stone--“six for th’ body and th’ odd half for his legs.” You could have told where Monjoy was by the cheers that rose from time to time. Cicely and Sally and Dooina Benn appeared at an upper window, and there was more cheering; but the biggest cheer of all came when Cicely and Arthur rose hand in hand at the supper-board and Arthur tried to thank them all. But there was no hearing him for the din, and he sat down again. The parson, still in righteous dudgeon (and, maybe, having his own opinion of the big bridegroom’s method of obtaining order in the church), had looked in for a minute and withdrawn again; but as he passed the gate of the yard there arose another tow-row, and half a dozen Back o’ th’ Mooiners brought in Jeremy Cope on a hurdle, as if for a stang-riding, and shuttered him off on to a pile of fleeces. “Fotch Dooina tul him!” they cried; and Cope mopped and mowed and blinked his purple lids. Monjoy rescued him from Dooina’s arms. It grew late. Over the Scout the moon rose mild and yellow, and they began to leave Eastwood’s yard and to assemble in the square outside the “Gooise.” Some began to ascend the sheep-tracks of the Scout, but the most remained till morning, when there was a great swilling and sousing and freshening-up at the horse-troughs. During all the following day they straggled homewards, to celebrate Red Monjoy’s wedding in their own fastnesses; and two days later there came word of rejoicings still continued at Booth, where, with fantastic rites, the effigies of Monjoy and Cicely had been crowned and enthroned, King and Queen of Back o’ th’ Mooin.