"Of course they'll come out." This was Mrs. Oliver. "Locks and bars couldn't keep a country community at home, when there is anything going on. But as to the _feeling_--that is a different matter. --Oliver, do take my muff. I want to take off my veil. There will be no chance once I am inside the door. Nan is walking twice as fast now as when we started. She will have us all up the aisle before----" "Where's Billy Sewall bolting to?" Guy sent back this stage-whisper from the front of the procession, to Margaret, his wife, who was walking with Father Fernald, her hand on his gallant arm. In John Fernald's day a man always offered his arm to the lady he escorted. "He caught sight of Mr. Blake, across the road. They're going in together," Margaret replied. "I think Mr. Blake is to have a part in the service." "Old Ebenezer Blake? You don't say!" Father Fernald ejaculated in astonishment. He had not been told of Sewall's visit to the aged minister. "Well--well--that is thoughtful of William Sewall. I don't suppose Elder Blake has taken part in a service in fifteen years--twenty, maybe. He used to be a great preacher, too, in his day. I used to listen to him, when I was a young man, and think he could put things in about as interesting a way as any preacher I ever heard. Good man, too, he was--and is. But nobody's thought of asking him to make a prayer in public since--I don't know when. --Well, well--look at the people going in! I guess we'd better be getting right along to our seats, or there won't be any left." VII The organ was playing--very softly. Carolyn was a skilful manipulator of keyboards, and she had discovered that by carefully refraining from the use of certain keys--discreetly marked by postage stamps--she could produce a not unmusical effect of subdued harmony. This unquestionably added very much to the impression of a churchly atmosphere, carried out to the eye by the Christmas wreathing and twining of the heavy ropes of shining laurel leaves, and by the massing of the whole pulpit-front in the soft, dark green of hemlock boughs and holly. To the people who entered the house with vivid memories of the burning July day when words hardly less burning had seemed to scorch the barren walls, this lamp-lit interior, clothed with the garments of the woods and fragrant with their breath, seemed a place so different that it could hardly be the same.