I went out, forgetting after all my book, and took a short cut across the fields and down a disused, mossy lane, purple with tall foxgloves, and sleepy with droning bees, which brought me out abruptly at the old church. Service was still held here, and as I came up I saw the door was open. I went inside, and an old woman who was dusting the pews wished me good-day. I talked to her for a few minutes and then began to wander idly about, trying my Latin on the inscriptions, peeping behind doors and through windows. A church on a week-day was for me quite a different thing from a church on a Sunday. Its quiet appealed to me, a sort of homely, gentle charm that was at once dissipated by the entrance of a congregation. I went into the pulpit and imagined myself preaching, while the old woman, Margaret Beattie, leaned on the handle of her broom and watched me. “You’d make the queer fine curate, Master Peter,” she said, evidently seeing in this exhibition the betrayal of a vocation. “They’ll never get me, Margaret,” I replied. “The Church is not what it was. I believe you are an old witch,” I went on, for she was half-deaf, “and when you have done your mischief here, you will ride away on that broomstick.” I went out into the sunshine and pottered about among the graves. All were old, for nobody was ever buried here now. Most of the head-stones were stained green with age and weather, and the lettering was so worn that it was often necessary to peer close to read a name or a date. I lingered in the corner where lay the bones of some of those fine ladies and gentlemen whose pictures I had been looking at. Well, it was a pleasant place.... Margaret came out, locking the door after her. I heard her shambling feet on the gravel, followed by the clanging of the iron gate that left me to myself. Had my ghosts preceded me here, or did they still linger in the upper rooms at Derryaghy? I threaded my way among the graves to the low, sun-warmed wall, all golden and green and grey with velvet moss on weathered stone. Before me lay the broad open country I must cross to go home, rich and dark in the late afternoon light. The gleam of water, of pool and stream, shone palely amid long grass and darker gorse bushes: and beyond were trees, black and soft against the western sky, as if rubbed in by a dusky thumb. Distant hills stood out from the grey clouds and the softer, deeper background of luminous sky. Everything shimmered and gleamed in a kind of romantic richness and divine softness that I was to see later in dreamy landscapes by Perugino. And over all was a great sea of light and sky――grey, faint green, and deeper, warmer yellow, with clear silver where the water lay.