A grand old man he was in person—tall, and venerable as Bede himself, with the most benevolent of faces and the most silver of silver hair. Fit to be an archbishop, so far as appearances went, but most unfit to have the charge of the hundred souls—there were no more of them—committed to his trust. To these he ministered, or (as I have said) failed to minister, on Sunday mornings; for often as not the services, stipulated for at the price of £75 per annum, were left unperformed on the shallowest of pretexts. It might be the weather; it might be that he was indisposed; often, I fear, it was from sheer disinclination. To the hamlet that clustered close round the church it was a matter of comparative indifference. They never believed by anticipation in the service till the bell was actually sounding; and his henchman (clerk, sexton, choirmaster and gravedigger in one) had strict orders to withhold this summons till the Rector himself was actually in view. But to our party, who lived two miles away, the question of service or no service was a serious one. It meant hesitation in starting, and reluctance to risk the chance—provocation, too, even to my long-suffering father, when he found the church door barred, and a south-wester brewing, in the teeth of which we had to struggle home over a barren down, unsupported by the nutriment, mental and moral, on which we had calculated. But the service, when it did take place, was a queerer experience by far than the service foregone. The orchestra would have been the despair of Nebuchadnezzar. It consisted of a single flageolet, blown by the wheezy old sexton—one Joseph Edwards by name. We did not even boast of a serpent—instrument immortalised by Mr. Hardy for its volume of tone in supplementing deficiencies. Now the flageolet is a pet aversion of mine, and I can forgive Nebuchadnezzar many of his iniquities for having (so far as we know) excluded it from his band. Indeed, musicians themselves would seem to be ashamed of it, for they have re-christened it, I am told, by a humbler name. But I was careful not to betray my feelings to my friend Joseph, and listened patiently while he enlarged on the capabilities and melodiousness of his pet instrument. “Not but what I’m getting a bit wheezy (he’d often say to me), and can’t make the flourishes as onst I could. But ’tis may be better as it is. They quieter tunes are belike more godly. Anyhow the choir—poor souls—got right puzzled among my turns and quavers, coming in here, there and no how at the finish.”