When the congregation withdrew from the church after morning service, a certain number of persons would linger in the porch as curious and rather critical spectators of what was going on. They were especially interested in observing whether the body of communicants would be augmented by any new comer; for participation in the Sacrament, despite Mr. Eversley’s strenuous efforts, remained among the Kestercham folk as a sort of social or moral badge, and the merits and demerits of any labourer or his wife who ventured to approach the Lord’s Table for the first time were severely scrutinised and debated by their neighbours. Mr. Eversley had done his best to check this practice, and he sometimes thought Mr. Dawes, the clerk, himself must be in league (as was probable enough) with his fellow-parishioners in the porch; for if he caused the door leading from the porch into the church to be shut at the beginning of the Communion Office, it was sure to be opened by some unseen hand before the office was done. The few farmers were in general communicants, but not many labourers. It had been one of Mr. Eversley’s difficulties, when he came to Kestercham, that the farmers, who felt that their social precedence was somehow determined by the order in which they received the sacred elements, were all eager to be first in approaching the Lord’s Table; but it had at last been settled that Mr. Seaford, as churchwarden, and his family should communicate immediately after the vicarage party, and then the other farmers and their families according to the order of their pews, those whose pews were nearest to the chancel of the church communicating first, and the corresponding pews on the two sides of the nave being regarded as equal in merit. This arrangement had cost Mr. Eversley a great deal of trouble, and it still left some smouldering discontent.