Harry looked towards her for approval, and her heart smote her. It was not his fault if his shadowy existence was the occasion of a great injustice. She went up to him and patted his cheek, and said, "Capital, capital! What should we do without you, Harry?" "I'm taking my place, aren't I?" he said, delighted. "That's what Nurse is always saying. I must assert myself and take my place." CHAPTER XXXI "Remember, Lord, Thou didst not make me good. Or if Thou didst, it was so long ago I have forgotten--and never understood, I humbly think." GEORGE MACDONALD. On a sunny September day Dick the absentee was gathered to his fathers at Riff. Is there any church in the world as beautiful as the old church of Riff where he was buried?--with its wonderful flint-panelled porch; with the chalice, host, and crown carved in stone on each side of the arched doorway as you go in; beautiful still in spite of the heavy hand of Cromwell's men who tore all the dear little saints out of their niches in the great wooden font cover, which mounts richly carved and dimly painted like a spire, made of a hundred tiny fretted spires, to the very roof of the nave, almost touching the figures of the angels leaning with outstretched wings from their carved and painted hammerbeams. In spite of all the sacrilege of which it has been the victim, the old font cover with the coloured sunshine falling aslant upon it through the narrow pictured windows remains a tangle of worn, mysterious splendour. And the same haggard, forlorn beauty rests on the remains of the carved screen, with its company of female saints painted one in each panel. Poor saints! savagely obliterated by the same Protestant zeal, so that now you can barely spell out their names in semicircle round their heads: Saint Cecilia, Saint Agatha, Saint Osyth.