THE Sunday evening service at Little Yafford parish church was as fashionable in its own particular way as an Italian opera in June. Everybody met everybody else there. The psalms were chanted very fairly, the anthem was always a feature, the prettiest hymns were sung, and the sermon, whether preached by the vicar or curate, seemed to have a peculiar life and fervour in it that harmonized with the more exalted feelings of the flock. The cold realism of Sunday morning gave place on Sunday evening to a vague enthusiasm, a spiritualized ardour. Of course there were people for whom that lofty liturgy soared too high--uncultured souls which demanded to be fed on coarser diet,--but these were outside the pale, and generally wore a style of bonnet which would have been a blot on the subdued beauty of the parish church, with its noble nave, long narrow aisles, carved rood screen, and waggon roof. These barbarians worshipped in a queer little chapel in High Street, to which they descended a step or two from the level of the pavement, and in which tabernacle they might be heard singing their own particular hymns with the utmost strength of their untrained voices, as the Church of England people went by, the Dissenters assembling half an hour earlier than their conforming brethren, and generally prolonging their service half an hour later. It was a pretty scene, that parish church of Little Yafford, in the late October evening. The clusters of wax candles in the brazen branches threw just enough light on column and arch to leave the greater part of the building in shadow. The rich colouring about the altar made a glow of splendour at the end of the gray stone chancel. The old oak pews, with their quaintly carved doors, reflected the light redly on bosses that took every shape, from the graceful _fleur-de-lys_ to the dog-faced demon or blunt-nosed cherub. The font in its distant corner gleamed whitely below a cover of crimson cloth. Crimson cushions in many of the pews, and the dark green and gold adornment of pulpit and reading desk, the old brass lectern, the new brass candelabra, brightened the sombre stone and dark brown oak, and made up in some wise for the loss of the stained glories of the chancel window, dull and dead at this hour.