But why, when the boys wanted to be begged off, was the schoolmistress
to be their advocate? Because Grace Harvey exercised, without
intending anything of the kind, an almost mesmeric influence on every
one in the little town. Goodness rather than talent had given her
wisdom, and goodness rather than courage a power of using that wisdom,
which, to those simple, superstitious folk, seemed altogether an
inspiration. There was a mystery about her, too, which worked strongly
on the hearts of the West-country people. She was supposed to be at
times "not right;" and wandering intellect is with them, as with
many primitive peoples, an object more of awe than of pity. Her deep
melancholy alternated with bursts of wild eloquence, with fantastic
fables, with entreaties and warnings against sin, full of such pity
and pathos that they melted, at times, the hardest hearts. A whole
world of strange tales, half false, half true, had grown up around
her as she grew. She was believed to spend whole nights in prayer; to
speak with visitors from the other world; even to have the power of
seeing into futurity. The intensity of her imagination gave rise to
the belief that she had only to will, and she could see whom she
would, and all that they were doing, even across the seas; her
exquisite sensibility, it was whispered, made her feel every bodily
suffering she witnessed, as acutely as the sufferer's self, and in the
very limb in which he suffered. Her deep melancholy was believed to be
caused by some dark fate--by some agonising sympathy with evil-doers;
and it was sometimes said in Aberalva,--"Don't do that, for poor
Grace's sake. She bears the sins of all the parish."

So it befell that Grace Harvey governed, she knew not how or why, all
hearts in that wild simple fishing-town. Rough men, fighting on the
quay, shook hands at Grace's bidding. Wives who could not lure their
husbands from the beer-shop, sent Grace in to fetch them home, sobered