The bell in the little church of St. Gervan's was clanging loudly, and people were beginning to get into their various craft, and push away across the harbour. Merle was carrying her camera, and was busy taking snap-shots of the interesting scene. Mavis, who had leanings towards art, had brought her sketch-book and jotted down impressions in black-lead pencil. For the sake of everybody it was a mercy that the weather, which had been behaving badly of late, held up and gave bursts of brilliant sunshine. It was only a short row from the quay to the old church. The congregation disembarked at a jetty, moored their boats, and climbed the eighty-seven stone steps that led steeply upward. To-day the usually neglected place had been made to look wonderfully spick and span. The grass had been mown between the graves and round the soldiers' monument, where people were already piling up wreaths, floral crosses, and bunches of blossoms. The tower still lacked its coping, and the doorway had sunk yet more, but the windows had been cleaned, and all cobwebs were swept away. Inside the church was decked with beautiful flowers, arum lilies, and roses, and pale-pink peonies and bush lupins, and many lovely half-exotic plants from the gardens of The Warren and the Vicarage. People were taking their places on the old oak benches. The Ramsays went into a seat half-way down the nave, exactly behind the Glyn Williamses, who had arrived in a body, governess and all. Bevis was about to follow when the Vicar came up to him, and after a short whispered conversation motioned him into the Talland family pew. It was Bevis's first visit to church since his illness, and to the whole congregation the Vicar's act seemed a public acknowledgment of the boy's new position in Chagmouth. He flushed scarlet, hesitated a moment, then stepped forward and took his place with a quiet dignity which became both himself and the occasion. The short service was very simple, partly a thanksgiving, and partly a memorial to those who had given their lives for their country. Through the open door came the sound of the lap of waves and the screaming of gulls. "They that go down to the sea in ships," ran the Vicar's text, "that do business in great waters: these see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep." To Mavis the sunlight and the scent of the flowers and the prayers all seemed blended together into one beautiful picturesque whole, that joined ancient and modern and the living and the dead, and united those who worshipped with their rough forefathers who had carved those quaint bench ends, or those figures of the saints with the colourings of red, and blue, and gold. As Bevis left the cool, flower-decked church, and stepped through the doorway into the sunshine, the very first person to greet him was Tudor Williams. The two boys gripped hands heartily, and without a trace of any former resentment.