Mrs Bond was right--something was keeping the clerk, and that something was the prettiest, yellow-haired, violet-eyed maiden that ever turned out not to be a dreadful heroine given to breaking up, and then pounding, the whole of the ten commandments in a way that would have staggered Moses himself. No; Amy Frith, the rector's daughter, was not a wicked heroine, and now that she was busy giving the finishing touches to the altar-screen, and pricking her little fingers with holly till they bled, she would not let the old man go because young Harry Thornton, her father's pupil, was there. And Amy knew that so sure as old Skurge took himself off, the young man would begin making love, which, though it may be crowned in a church, ought not to be made in the same place. The young man fumed and fretted; and the old man coughed and groaned and told of his rheumatics; but it was of no use; the maiden pitied them both, and would have set them at liberty on her own terms, but remained inexorable in other respects till the clock chimed half-past six, when the candles were extinguished, the dim old church left to its repose, and the late occupants took their departure to the rectory, and the long low cottage fifty yards from the church gates. "No; it couldn't be done at any price--turn the woman out on such a night; the whole place would be up in arms; but he would go and see if there was any money for him;" and so Asher Skurge partook of his frugal tea by his very frugal fire, a fire which seemed to make him colder, for it was so small that the wintry winds, which came pelting in at keyhole and cranny, all hooted, and teased, and laughed at it, and rushed, and danced, and flitted round, so that they made a terrible commotion all about Asher's chair, and gave him far more cause to complain of rheumatics than he had before. So Asher buttoned himself up, body and soul too; he buttoned his soul up so tight that there was not space for the smallest, tiniest shade of a glance or a ray of good feeling to peep out; and then he sallied forth out into the night-wind, with his nose as sharp and blue as if it had been made of steel; and, as he hurried along, it split the frosty wind right up, like the prow of a boat does water, and the sharp wind was thus split into two sharper winds, which went screeching behind him, to cut up the last remains of anything left growing.