Early though it was, Miss Carroll discovered when she entered the church gate that she was not the first comer; the choir ladies were practising within, and other ladies of floral if not musical tastes were arranging mountain laurel in the font and chancel--to the manifest disapproval of Flower, the disapproval being expressed in the eye he had fixed upon them, his "mountain eye," as he called his best one. "It be swep, and it be dustered," he said to himself. "What more do the reasonless female creatures want?" Miss Carroll had not joined the choir, although the rector, prompted by his junior warden, had suggested it; Miss Sophia Greer would, therefore, continue to sing the solos undisturbed. She was trying one now. And the other ladies were talking. But this music, this conversation, this arrangement of laurel, and this disapproval of Flower went on within the church. The new-comer had the churchyard to herself; she went over to the pines on its northern side, and strolled to and fro at the edge of the slope, looking at the mountains, whose peaks rose like a grand amphitheatre all round her against the sky. Her face was sad, but the bitterness, the revolt, were gone; her eyes were quiet and sweet. She had accepted her sorrow. It was a great one. At first it had been overwhelming; for all the brightness of the past had depended upon her father, all her plans for the present, her hopes for the future. His help, his comprehension, his dear affection and interest, had made up all her life, and she did not know how to go on without them, how to live. Never again could she depend upon him for guidance, never again have the exquisite happiness of his perfect sympathy--for he had always understood her, and no one else ever had, or at least so she thought. She had cared only for him, she had found all her companionship in him; and now she was left alone.