The blue pure sky, the perfume of a bean-field in flower, the hawthorns in undulating masses of snowy blossom, and here and there, in the angles of the meadows, the heaped-up gold of furze-bushes that were more bloom than bush--all these made life to-day a sensuous delight which exacted no questionings of the intellect, suggested no doubt as to the bliss of living. If it were always thus--a crust of bread and cheese under such a sky, a bed in the hollow of yonder bank between bean-field and clover, would suffice for a man's content, Allan thought, as he stood on a knoll in God's acre, and looked down upon the meadows that rose and fell over ridge and hollow with gentle undulations between Filbury and Discombe. What had become of Mrs. Wornock? He had made the circuit of the burial-ground, pausing often to read an epitaph, but never relaxing his watchfulness of the carriage yonder, waiting under the limes. The carriage was there still, and there was no sign of Mrs. Wornock. Was there a celebration? No; he had seen all the congregation leave the church, except the mistress of that curtained pew in the corner near the pulpit. Presently the broad strong chords of a prelude were poured out upon the still air--a prelude by Sebastian Bach, masterful, imposing, followed by a fugue, whose delicate intricacies were exquisitely rendered by the player. Standing in the sunshine listening to that music, Allan remembered what Mrs. Mornington had told him. The player was Mrs. Wornock. He had seen the professional organist and schoolmaster leave the church with his flock of village boys. Mrs. Wornock had lingered after the service to gratify herself with the music she loved. He sauntered and loitered near the open window, listening to the music for nearly an hour. Then the organ sounds melted away in one last long rallentando, and presently he heard the heavy old key turn in the heavy old lock, and the lady in grey came slowly along the path to the lych-gate, followed by a clumsy boy, who looked like a smaller edition of the blacksmith. Allan stood within a few yards of the pathway to see her go by, hoping to be himself unobserved, screened by the angle of an old monument, where rust had eaten away the railing, and moss and lichen had encrusted the pompous Latin epitaph, while the dense growth of ivy had muffled the funeral urn. Here, in the shadow of ostentation's unenduring monument, he waited for that slender and still youthful form to pass. In figure the widow of twenty years looked a girl, and the face which turned quickly towards Allan, her keen ear having caught the rustle of the long grass under his tread, had the delicacy of outline and transparency of youth. The cheek had lost its girlish roundness, and the large grey eye was somewhat sunken beneath the thoughtful brow. Involuntarily Allan recalled a familiar line-- "Thy cheek is pale with thought and not with care."