Meanwhile, in the room upstairs, Alice Puttenham lying with her face pressed against the back of the chair into which she had feebly dropped, heard Hester run down the steps, tried to call, or rise, and could not. Since the death of Judith Sabin she had had little or no sleep, and much less food than usual, with—all the while—the pressure of a vague corrosive terror on nerve and brain. The shock of that miniature in Hester's hands had just turned the scale; endurance had given way.

The quick footsteps receded. Yet she could do nothing to arrest them. Her mind floated in darkness.

Presently out of the darkness emerged a sound, a touch—a warm hand on hers.

"Dear—dear Miss Puttenham!"

"Yes."

Her voice seemed to herself a sigh—the faintest—from a great distance.

"The servants said you were here. Ellen came up to knock, and you did not hear. I was afraid you were ill—so I came in—you'll forgive me."

"Thank you."

Silence for a while. Mary brought cold water, chafed her friend's hands, and rendered all the services that women in such straits know how to lavish on a sufferer. Gradually Alice mastered herself, but more than a broken word or two still seemed beyond her, and Mary waited in patience. She was well aware that some trouble of a nature unknown to her had been weighing on Miss Puttenham for a week or more; and she realized too, instinctively, that she would get no light upon it.

Presently there was a knock at the door, and Mary went to open it. The servant whispered, and she returned at once.

"Mr. Meynell is here," she said, hesitating. "You will let me send him away?"

Alice Puttenham opened her eyes.

"I can't see him. But please—give him some tea. He'll have walked—from
Markborough."

Mary prepared to obey.

"I'll come back afterward."

Alice roused herself further.

"No—there is the meeting afterward. You said you were going."

"I'd rather come back to you."

"No, dear—no. I'm—I'm better alone. Good night, kind angel. It's nothing"—she raised herself in the chair—"only bad nights! I'll go to bed—that'll be best. Go down—give him tea. And Mrs. Flaxman's going with you?"

"No. Mother said she wished to go," said Mary, slowly. "She and I were to meet in the village."

Alice nodded feebly, too weak to show the astonishment she felt.

"Just time. The meeting is at seven."

Then with a sudden movement—"Hester!—is she gone?"

"I met her and the maid—in the village—as I came in."

A silence—till Alice roused herself again—"Go dear, don't miss the meeting. I—I want you to be there. Good night."

And she gently pushed the girl from her, putting up her pale lips to be kissed, and asking that the little parlour-maid should be sent to help her undress.

Mary went unwillingly. She gave Miss Puttenham's message to the maid, and when the girl had gone up to her mistress she lingered a moment at the foot of the stairs, her hands lightly clasped on her breast, as though to quiet the stir within.

* * * * *

Meynell, expecting to see the lady of the house, could not restrain the start of surprise and joy with which he turned toward the incomer. He took her hand in his—pressing it involuntarily. But it slipped away, and Mary explained with her soft composure why she was there alone—that Miss Puttenham was suffering from a succession of bad nights and was keeping her room—that she sent word the Rector must please rest a little before going home, and allow Mary to give him tea.

Meynell sank obediently into a chair by the open window, and Mary ministered to him. The lines of his strong worn face relaxed. His look returned to her again and again, wistfully, involuntarily; yet not so as to cause her embarrassment.

She was dressed in some thin gray stuff that singularly became her; and with the gray dress she wore a collar or ruffle of soft white that gave it a slight ascetic touch. But the tumbling red-gold of the hair, the frank dignity of expression, belonged to no mere cloistered maid.

Meynell heard the news of Miss Puttenham's collapse with a sigh—checked at birth. He asked few questions about it; so Mary reflected afterward. He would come in again on the morrow, he said, to inquire for her. Then, with some abruptness, he asked whether Hester had been much seen at the cottage during the preceding week.

Mary reported that she had been in and out as usual, and seemed reconciled to the prospect of Paris.

"Are you—is Miss Puttenham sure that she hasn't still been meeting that man?"

Mary turned a startled look upon him.

"I thought he had gone away?"

"There may be a stratagem in that. I have been keeping what watch I could—but at this time—what use am I?"

The Rector threw himself back wearily in his chair, his hands behind his head. Mary was conscious of some deep throb of feeling that must not come to words. Even since she had known it the face had grown older—the lines deeper—the eyes finer. She stooped forward a little.

"It is hard that you should have this anxiety too. Oh! but I hope there is no need!"

He raised himself again with energy.

"There is always need with Hester. Oh! don't suppose I have forgotten her! I have written to that fellow, my cousin. I went, indeed, to see him the day before yesterday, but the servants at Sandford declared he had gone to town, and they were packing up to follow. Lady Fox-Wilton and Miss Alice here have been keeping a close eye on Hester herself, I know; but if she chose, she could elude us all!"

"She couldn't give such pain—such trouble!" cried Mary indignantly.

The Rector shook his head sadly. Then he looked at his companion.

"Has she made a friend of you? I wish she would."

"Oh! she doesn't take any account of me," said Mary, laughing. "She is quite kind to me—she tells me when she thinks my frock is hideous—or my hat's impossible—or she corrects my French accent. She is quite kind, but she would no more think of taking advice from me than from the sofa-cushion."

Meynell shrugged his shoulders.

"She has no bump of respect—never had!" and he began to give a half humorous account of the troubles and storms of Hester's bringing up. "I often ask myself whether we haven't all—whether I, in particular, haven't been a first-class bungler and blundered all through with regard to Hester. Did we choose the wrong governesses? They seemed most estimable people. Did we thwart her unnecessarily? I can't remember a time when she didn't have everything she wanted!"

"She didn't get on very well with her father?" suggested Mary timidly.

Meynell made a sudden movement, and did not answer for a moment.

"Sir Ralph and she were always at cross-purposes," he said at last. "But he was kind to her—according to his lights; and—he said some very sound and touching things to me about her—on his death-bed."

There was a short silence. Meynell had covered his eyes with his hand.
Mary was at a loss how to continue the conversation, when he resumed:

"I wonder if you will understand how strangely this anxiety weighs upon me—just now."

"Just now?"

"Here am I preaching to others," he said slowly, "leading what people call a religious movement, and this homely elementary task seems to be all going wrong. I don't seem to be able to protect this child confided to me."

"Oh, but you will protect her!" cried Mary, "you will! She mayn't seem to give way—when you talk to her; but she has said things to me—to my mother too—"

"That shows her heart isn't all adamant? Well, well!—you're a comforter, but—"

"I mean that she knows—I'm sure she does—what you've done for her—how you've cared for her," said Mary, stammering a little.

"I have done nothing but my plainest, simplest duty. I have made innumerable mistakes; and if I fail with her, it's quite clear that I'm not fit to teach or lead anybody."

The words were spoken with an impatient emphasis to which Mary did not venture a reply. But she could not restrain an expression in her gray eyes which was a balm to the harassed combatant beside her.

They said no more of Hester. And presently Mary's hunger for news of the Reform Movement could not be hid. It was clear she had been reading everything she could on the subject, and feeding upon it in a loneliness, and under a constraint, which touched Meynell profoundly. The conflict in her between a spiritual heredity—the heredity of her father's message—and her tender love for her mother had never been so plain to him. Yet he could not feel that he was abetting any disloyalty in allowing the conversation. She was mature. Her mind had its own rights!

Mary indeed, unknown to him, was thrilling under a strange and secret sense of deliverance. Her mother's spiritual grip upon her had relaxed; she moved and spoke with a new though still timid sense of freedom.

So once again, as on their first meeting, only more intimately, her sympathy, her quick response, led him on. Soon lying back at his ease, his hands behind his head, he was painting for her the progress of the campaign; its astonishing developments; the kindling on all sides of the dry bones of English religion.

The new—or re-written—Liturgy of the Reform was, it seemed, almost completed. From all parts: from the Universities, from cathedral cloisters, from quiet country parishes, from the clash of life in the great towns, men had emerged as though by magic to bring to the making of it their learning and their piety, the stored passion of their hearts. And the mere common impulse, the mere release of thoughts and aspirations so long repressed, had brought about an extraordinary harmony, a victorious selflessness, among the members of the commission charged with the task. The work had gone with rapidity, yet with sureness, as in those early years of Christianity, which saw so rich and marvellous an upgrowth from the old soil of humanity. With surprising ease and spontaneity the old had passed over into the new; just as in the first hundred years after Christ's death the psalms and hymns and spiritual songs of the later Judaism had become, with but slight change, the psalms and hymns of Christianity; and a new sacred literature had flowered on the stock of the old.

"To-night—here!—we submit the new marriage service and the new burial service to the Church Council. And the same thing will be happening, at the same moment, in all the churches of the Reform—scattered through England."

"How many churches now?" she asked, with a quickened breath.

"Eighteen in July—this week, over a hundred. But before our cases come on for trial there will be many more. Every day new congregations come in from new dioceses. The beacon fire goes leaping on, from point to point!"

But the emotion which the phrase betrayed was instantly replaced by the business tone of the organizer as he went on to describe some of the practical developments of the preceding weeks: the founding of a newspaper; the collection of propagandist funds; the enrolment of teachers and missionaries, in connection with each Modernist church. Yet, at the end of it all, feeling broke through again.

"They have been wonderful weeks!—wonderful! Which of us could have hoped to see the spread of such a force in the dusty modern world! You remember the fairy story of the prince whose heart was bound with iron bands—and how one by one, the bands give way? I have seen it like that—in life after life."

"And the fighting?"

She had propped her face on her hands, and her eyes, with their eager sympathy, their changing lights, rained influence on the man beside her; an influence insensibly mingling with and colouring the passion for ideas which held them both in its grip.

"—Has been hot—will be of course infinitely hotter still! But yet, again and again, with one's very foes, one grasps hands. They seem to feel with us 'the common wave'—to be touched by it—touched by our hope. It is as though we had made them realize at last how starved, how shut out, we have been—we, half the thinking nation!—for so long!"

"Don't—don't be too confident!" she entreated. "Aren't you—isn't it natural you should miscalculate the forces against you? Oh! they are so strong! and—and so noble."

She drew in her breath, and he understood her.

"Strong indeed," he said gravely. "But—"

Then a smile broke in.

"Have I been boasting? You see some signs of swelled head? Perhaps you are right. Now let me tell you what the other side are doing. That chastens one! There is a conference of Bishops next week; there was one a week ago. These are of course thundering resolutions in Convocation. The English Church Union has an Albert Hall meeting; it will be magnificent. A 'League of the Trinity' has started against us, and will soon be campaigning all over England. The orthodox newspapers are all in full cry. Meanwhile the Bishops are only waiting for the decision of my case—the test case—in the lower court to take us all by detachments. Every case, of course, will go ultimately to the Supreme Court—the Privy Council. A hundred cases—that will take time! Meanwhile—from us—a monster petition—first to the Bishops for the assembling of a full Council of the English Church, then to Parliament for radical changes in the conditions of membership of the Church, clerical and lay."

Mary drew in her breath.

"You can't win! you can't win!"

And he saw in her clear eyes her sorrow for him and her horror of the conflict before him.

"That," he said quietly, "is nothing to us. We are but soldiers under command."

He rose; and, suddenly, she realized with a fluttering heart how empty that room would be when he was gone. He held out his hand to her.

"I must go and prepare what I have to say to-night. The Church Council consists of about thirty people—two thirds of them will be miners."

"How is it possible that they can understand you?" she asked him, wondering.

"You forget that half of them I have taught from their childhood. They are my spiritual brothers, or sons—picked men—the leaders of their fellows—far better Christians than I. I wish you could see them—and hear them." He looked at her a little wistfully.

"I am coming," she said, looking down.

His start of pleasure was very evident.

"I am glad," he said simply; "I want you to know these men."

"And my mother is coming with me."

Her voice was constrained. Meynell felt a natural surprise. He paused an instant, and then said with gentle emphasis:

"I don' think there will be anything to wound her. At any rate, there will be nothing new, or strange—to her—in what is said to-night."

"Oh, no!" Then, after a moment's awkwardness, she said, "We shall soon be going away."

His face changed.

"Going away? I thought you would be here for the winter!"

"No. Mother is so much better, we are going to our little house in the
Lakes, in Long Whindale. We came here because mother was ill—and Aunt
Rose begged us. But—"

"Do you know"—he interrupted her impetuously—"that for six months I've had a hunger for just one fortnight up there among the fells?"

"You love them?" Her face bloomed with pleasure. "You know the dear mountains?"

He smiled.

"It doesn't do to think of them, does it? You should see the letters on my table! But I may have to take a few days' rest, some time. Should I find you in Long Whindale—if I dropped down on you—over Goat Scar?"

"Yes—from December till March!" Then she suddenly checked the happiness of her look and tone. "I needn't warn you that it rains."

"Doesn't it rain! And everybody pretends it doesn't. The lies one tells!"

She laughed.

They stood looking at each other. An atmosphere seemed to have sprung up round them in which every tone and movement had suddenly become magnified—significant.

Meynell recovered himself. He held out his hand in farewell, but he had scarcely turned away from her, when she made a startled movement toward the open window.

"What is that?"

There was a sound of shouting and running in the street outside. A crowd seemed to be approaching. Meynell ran out into the garden to listen. By this time the noise had grown considerably, and he thought he distinguished his own name among the cries.

"Something has happened at the colliery!" he said to Mary, who had followed him.

And he hurried toward the gate, bareheaded, just as a gray-haired lady in black entered the garden.

"Mother," cried Mary, in amazement.

Catharine Elsmere paused—one moment; she looked from her daughter to
Meynell. Then she hurried to the Rector.

"You are wanted!" she said, struggling to get her breath. "A terrible thing has happened. They think four lives have been lost—some accident to the cage—and people blame the man in charge. They've got him shut up in the colliery office—and declare they'll kill him. The crowd looks dangerous—and there are very few police. I heard you were here—some one, the postman, saw you come in—you must stop it. The people will listen to you."

Her fine, pale face, framed in her widow's veil, did not so much ask as command. He replied by a gesture—then by two or three rapid inquiries. Mary—bewildered—saw them for an instant as allies and equals, each recognizing the other. Then Meynell ran to the gate, and was at once swallowed up in the moving groups which had gathered there, and seemed to carry him back with them toward the colliery.

Catharine Elsmere turned to follow—Mary at her side. Mary looked at her in anxiety, dreading the physical strain for one, of late, so frail.

"Mother darling!—ought you?"

Catharine took no heed whatever of the question.

"It is the women who are so terrible," she said in a low voice, as they hurried on; "their faces were like wild beasts. They have telephoned to Cradock for police. If Mr. Meynell can keep them in check for half an hour, there may be hope."

They ran on, swept along by the fringe of the crowd till they reached the top of a gentle descent at the farther end of the village. At the bottom of this hill lay the colliery, with its two huge chimneys, its shed and engine houses, its winding machinery, and its heaps of refuse. Within the enclosure, from the height where they stood, could be seen a thin line of police surrounding a small shed—the pay-office. On the steps of it stood the manager, and the Rector, to be recognized by his long coat and his bare head, had just joined him. Opposite to the police, and separated from the shed by about ten yards and a wooden paling, was a threatening and vociferating mob, which stretched densely across the road and up the hill on either side; a mob largely composed of women—dishevelled, furious women—their white faces gleaming amid the coal-blackened forms of the miners.

"They'll have 'im out," said a woman in front of Mary Elsmere. "Oh, my God!—they'll have 'im out! It was he caused the death of the boy—yo mind 'im—young Jimmy Ragg—a month sen; though the crowner's jury did let 'im off, more shame to them! An' now they say as how he signalled for 'em to bring up the men from the Albert pit afore he'd made sure as the cage in the Victory pit was clear!"

"Explain to me, please," said Mary, touching the woman's arm.

Half a dozen turned eagerly upon her.

"Why, you see, miss, as the two cages is like buckets in a well—the yan goes down, as the other cooms up. An' there's catches as yo mun knock away to let 'un go down—an' this banksman—ee's a devil!—he niver so much as walked across to the other shaft to see—an' theer was the catches fast—an' instead o' goin' down, theer was the cage stuck, an' the rope uncoilin' itsel', and fallin' off the drum—an' foulin' the other rope—An' then all of a suddent, just as them poor fellows wor nearin' top—the drum began to work t'other way—run backards, you unnerstan?—an' the engineman lost 'is head an' niver thowt to put on t'breaks—an'—oh! Lord save us!—whether they was drownt at t'bottom i' the sump, or killt afore they got theer—theer's no one knows yet—They're getten of 'em up now."

And as she spoke, a great shout which became a groan ran through the crowd. Men climbed up the railings at the side of the road that they might see better. Women stood on tiptoe. A confused clamour came from below, and in the colliery yard there could be seen a gruesome sight; four stretchers, borne by colliers, their burdens covered from view. Beside them were groups of women and children and in front of them the crowd made way. Up the hill they came, a great wail preceding and surrounding them; behind them the murmurs of an ungovernable indignation.

As the procession neared them Mary saw a gray-haired woman throw up her arm, and heard her cry out in a voice harsh and hideous with excitement:

"Let 'im as murdered them pay for't! What's t' good o' crowner's juries?—Let's settle it oursel's!"

Deep murmurs answered her.

"And it's this same Jenkins," said another fierce voice, "as had a sight to do wi' bringin' them blacklegs down here, in the strike, last autumn. He's been a great man sense, has Jenkins, wi' the masters; but he sha'n't murder our husbinds and sons for us, while he's loafin' round an' playin' the lord—not he! Have they got 'un safe?"

"Aye, he's in the pay-house safe enough," shouted another—a man. "An' if them as is defendin' of 'un won't give 'un up, there's ways o' makin' them."

The procession of the dead approached—all the men baring their heads, and the women wailing. In front came a piteous group—a young half-fainting wife, supported by an older woman, with children clinging to her skirts. Catharine went forward, and lifted a baby or two that was being dragged along the ground. Mary took up another child, and they both joined the procession.

As they did so, there was a shout from below.

Mary, white as her dress, asked an elderly miner beside her, who had shown no excitement whatever, to tell her what had happened. He clambered up on the bank to look and came back to her.

"They've beaten 'un back, miss," he said in her ear. "They've got the surface men to help, and Muster Meynell he's doing his best; if there's anybody can hold 'em, he can; but there's terrible few on 'em. It is time as the Cradock men came up. They'll be trying fire before long, an' the women is like devils."

On went the procession into the village, leaving the fight behind them. In Mary's heart, as she was pushed and pressed onward, burnt the memory of Meynell on the steps—speaking, gesticulating—and the surging crowd in front of him.

There was that to do, however, which deadened fear. In the main street the procession was met by hurrying doctors and nurses. For those broken bodies indeed—young men in their prime—nothing could be done, save to straighten the poor limbs, to wash the coal dust from the strong faces, and cover all with the white linen of death. But the living—the crushed, stricken living—taxed every energy of heart and mind. Catharine, recognized at once by the doctors as a pillar of help, shrank from no office and no sight, however terrible. But she would not permit them to Mary, and they were presently separated.

Mary had a trio of sobbing children on her knee, in the living-room of one of the cottages, when there was a sudden tramp outside. Everybody in Miners' Row, including those who were laying out the dead, ran to the windows.

"The police from Cradock!"—fifty of them.

The news passed from mouth to mouth, and even those who had been maddest half an hour before felt the relief of it.

Meanwhile detachments of shouting men and women ran clattering at intervals through the village streets. Sometimes stragglers from them would drop into the cottages alongside—and from their panting talk, what had happened below became roughly clear. The police had arrived only just in time. The small band defending the office was worn out, the Rector had been struck, palings torn down; in another half-hour the rioters would have set the place on fire and dragged out the man of whom they were in search.

The narrator's story was broken by a howl—

"Here he comes!" And once again, as though by a rush of muddy water, the street filled up, and a strong body of police came through it, escorting the banksman who had been the cause of the accident. A hatless, hunted creature, with white face and loosened limbs, he was hurried along by the police, amid a grim silence that had suddenly succeeded to the noise.

Behind came a group of men, officials of the colliery, and to the right of them walked the Rector, bareheaded as before, a bandage on the left temple. His eyes ran along the cottages, and he presently perceived Mary Elsmere standing at an open door, with a child that had cried itself to sleep in her arms.

Stepping out of the ranks, he approached her. The people made way for him, a few here and there with sullen faces, but in the main with a friendly and remorseful eagerness.

"It's all over," he said in Mary's ear. "But it was touch and go. An unpopular man—suspected of telling union secrets to the masters last year. He was concerned in another accident to a boy—a month ago; they all think he was in fault, though the jury exonerated him. And now—a piece of abominable carelessness!—manslaughter at least. Oh! he'll catch it hot! But we weren't going to have him murdered on our hands. If he hadn't got safe into the office, the women alone would have thrown him down the shaft. By the way, are you learned in 'first aid'?"

He pointed, smiling, to his temple, and she saw that the wound beneath the rough bandage was bleeding afresh.

"It makes me feel a bit faint," he said with annoyance; "and there is so much to do!"

"May I see to it?" said her mother's voice behind her. And Catharine, who had just descended from an upper room, went quickly to a nurse's wallet which had been left on a table in the kitchen, and took thence an antiseptic dressing and some bandaging.

Meynell sat down by the table, shivering a little from shock and strain, while she ministered to him. One of the women near brought him brandy; and Catharine deftly cleaned and dressed the wound. Mary looked on, handing what was necessary to her mother, and in spite of herself, a ray of strange sweetness stole through the tragedy of the day.

In a very few minutes Meynell rose. They were in the cottage of one of the victims. The dead lay overhead, and the cries of wife and mother could be heard through the thin flooring.

"Don't go up again!" he said peremptorily to Catharine. "It is too much for you."

She looked at him gently.

"They asked me to come back again. It is not too much for me. Please let me."

He gave way. Then, as he was following her upstairs, he turned to say to
Mary:

"Gather some of the people, if you can, outside. I want to give a notice when I come down."

He mounted the ladder-stairs leading to the upper room. Violent sounds of wailing broke out overhead, and the murmur of his voice could be heard between.

Mary quietly sent a few messengers into the street. Then she gathered up the sleeping child again in her arms, and sat waiting. In spirit she was in the room overhead. The thought of those two—her mother and Meynell—beside a bed of death together, pierced her heart.

After what seemed to her an age, she heard her mother's step, and the Rector following. Catharine stood again beside her daughter, brushing away at last a few quiet tears.

"You oughtn't to face this any more, indeed you oughtn't," said Meynell, with urgency, as he joined them. "Tell her so, Miss Mary. But she has been doing wonders. My people bless her!"

He held out his hand, involuntarily, and Catharine placed hers in it. Then, seeing a small crowd already collected in the street, he hurried out to speak to them.

Meanwhile evening had fallen, a late September evening, shot with gold and purple. Behind the village the yellow stubbles stretched up to the edge of the Chase and drifts of bluish smoke from the colliery chimneys hung in the still air.

Meynell, standing on the raised footpath above the crowd, gave notice that a special service of mourning would be held in the church that evening. The meeting of the Church Council would of course be postponed.

During his few words Mary made her way to the farther edge of the gathering, looking over it toward the speaker. Behind him ran the row of cottages, and in the doorway opposite she saw her mother, with her arm tenderly folded round a sobbing girl, the sister of one of the dead. The sudden tranquillity, the sudden pause from tumult and anguish seemed to draw a "wind-warm space" round Mary, and she had time, for a moment, to think of herself and the strangeness of this tragic day.

How amazing that her mother should be here at all. This meeting of the Reformers' League to which she had insisted on coming—as a spectator of course, and with the general public—what did it mean? Mary did not yet know, long as she had pondered it.

How beautiful was the lined face!—so pale in the golden dusk, in its heavy frame of black. Mary could not take her eyes from it. It betrayed an animation, a passion of life, which had been foreign to it for months. In these few crowded hours, when every word and action had been simple, instructive, inevitable; love to God and man working at their swiftest and purest; through all the tragedy and the horror some burden seemed to have dropped from Catharine's soul. She met her daughter's eyes, and smiled.

When Meynell had finished, the crowd silently drifted away, and he came back to the Elsmeres. They noticed the village fly coming toward them—saw it stop in the roadway.

"I sent for it," Meynell explained rapidly. "You mustn't let your mother do any more. Look at her! Please, will you both go to the Rectory? My cook will give you tea; I have let her know. Then the fly will take you home."

They protested in vain—must indeed submit. Catharine flushed a little at being so commanded; but there was no help for it.

"I would like to come and show you my den!" said Meynell, as he put them into the carriage. "But there's too much to do here."

He pointed sadly to the cottages, shut the door, and they were off.

During the short drive Catharine sat rather stiffly upright. Saint as she was, she was accustomed to have her way.

They drove into the dark shrubbery that lay between the Rectory and the road. At the door of the little house stood Anne in a white cap and clean apron. But the white cap sat rather wildly on its owner's head; nor would she take any interest in her visitors till she had got from them a fuller account of the tumult at the pit than had yet reached her, and assurances that Meynell's wound was but slight. But when these were given she pounced upon Catharine.

"Eh, but you're droppin'!"

And with many curious looks at them she hurried them into the study, where a hasty clearance had been made among the books, and a tea-table spread.

She bustled away to bring the tea.

Then exhaustion seized on Catharine. She submitted to be put on the sofa after it had been cleared of its pile of books; and Mary sat by her a while, holding her hands. Death and the agony of broken hearts overshadowed them.

But then the dogs came in, discreet at first, and presently—at scent of currant cake—effusively friendly. Mary fed them all, and Catharine watched the colour coming back to her face, and the dumb sweetness in the gray eyes.

Presently, while her mother still rested, Mary took courage to wander round the room, looking at the books, the photographs on the walls, the rack of pipes, the carpenter's bench, and the panels of half-finished carving. Timidly, yet eagerly, she breathed in the message it seemed to bring her from its owner—of strenuous and frugal life. Was that half-faded miniature of a soldier his father—and that sweet gray-haired woman his mother? Her heart thrilled to each discovery.

Then Anne invaded them, for conversation, and while Catharine, unable to hide her fatigue, lay speechless, Anne chattered about her master. Her indignation was boundless that any hand could be lifted against him in his own parish. "Why he strips himself bare for them, he does!"

And—with Mary unconsciously leading her—out came story after story, in the racy Mercian vernacular, illustrating a good man's life, and all

His little nameless unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love.

As they drove slowly home through the sad village street they perceived Henry Barron calling at some of the stricken houses. The squire was always punctilious, and his condolences might be counted on. Beside him walked a young man with a jaunty step, a bored sallow face, and a long moustache which he constantly caressed. Mary supposed him to be the squire's second son, "Mr. Maurice," whom nobody liked.

Then the church, looming through the dusk; lights shining through its fine perpendicular windows, and the sound of familiar hymns surging out into the starry twilight.

Catharine turned eagerly to her companion.

"Shall we go in?"

The emotion of one to whom religious utterance is as water to the thirsty spoke in her voice. But Mary caught and held her.

"No, dearest, no!—come home and rest." And when Catharine had yielded, and they were safely past the lighted church, Mary breathed more freely. Instinctively she felt that certain barriers had gone down before the tragic tumult, the human action of the day; let well alone!

And for the first time, as she sat in the darkness, holding her mother's hand, and watching the blackness of the woods file past under the stars, she confessed her love to her own heart—trembling, yet exultant.

* * * * *

Meanwhile in the crowded church, men and women who had passed that afternoon through the extremes of hate and sorrow unpacked their hearts in singing and prayer. The hymns rose and fell through the dim red sandstone church—symbol of the endless plaint of human life, forever clamouring in the ears of Time; and Meynell's address, as he stood on the chancel steps, almost among the people, the disfiguring strips of plaster on the temple and brow sharply evident between the curly black hair and the dark hollows of the eyes, sank deep into grief-stricken souls. It was the plain utterance of a man, with the prophetic gift, speaking to human beings to whom, through years of checkered life, he had given all that a man can give of service and of soul. He stood there as the living expression of their conscience, their better mind, conceived as the mysterious voice of a Divine power in man; and in the name of that Power, and its direct message to the human soul embodied in the tale we call Christianity, he bade them repent their bloodthirst, and hope in God for their dead. He spoke amid weeping; and from that night forward one might have thought his power unshakeable, at least among his own people.

But there were persons in the church who remained untouched by it. In the left aisle Hester sat a little apart from her sisters, her hard, curious look ranging from the preacher through the crowded benches. She surveyed it all as a spectacle, half thrilled, half critical. And at the western end of the aisle the squire and his son stood during the greater part of the service, showing plainly by their motionless lips and folded arms that they took no part in what was going on.

Father and son walked home together in close conversation.

And two days later the first anonymous letter in the Meynell case was posted in Markborough, and duly delivered the following morning to an address in Upcote Minor.