"Don't go up again!" he said peremptorily to Catharine. "It is too much for you." She looked at him gently. "They asked me to come back again. It is not too much for me. Please let me." He gave way. Then, as he was following her upstairs, he turned to say to Mary: "Gather some of the people, if you can, outside. I want to give a notice when I come down." He mounted the ladder-stairs leading to the upper room. Violent sounds of wailing broke out overhead, and the murmur of his voice could be heard between. Mary quietly sent a few messengers into the street. Then she gathered up the sleeping child again in her arms, and sat waiting. In spirit she was in the room overhead. The thought of those two--her mother and Meynell--beside a bed of death together, pierced her heart. After what seemed to her an age, she heard her mother's step, and the Rector following. Catharine stood again beside her daughter, brushing away at last a few quiet tears. "You oughtn't to face this any more, indeed you oughtn't," said Meynell, with urgency, as he joined them. "Tell her so, Miss Mary. But she has been doing wonders. My people bless her!" He held out his hand, involuntarily, and Catharine placed hers in it. Then, seeing a small crowd already collected in the street, he hurried out to speak to them. Meanwhile evening had fallen, a late September evening, shot with gold and purple. Behind the village the yellow stubbles stretched up to the edge of the Chase and drifts of bluish smoke from the colliery chimneys hung in the still air. Meynell, standing on the raised footpath above the crowd, gave notice that a special service of mourning would be held in the church that evening. The meeting of the Church Council would of course be postponed. During his few words Mary made her way to the farther edge of the gathering, looking over it toward the speaker. Behind him ran the row of cottages, and in the doorway opposite she saw her mother, with her arm tenderly folded round a sobbing girl, the sister of one of the dead. The sudden tranquillity, the sudden pause from tumult and anguish seemed to draw a "wind-warm space" round Mary, and she had time, for a moment, to think of herself and the strangeness of this tragic day. How amazing that her mother should be here at all. This meeting of the Reformers' League to which she had insisted on coming--as a spectator of course, and with the general public--what did it mean? Mary did not yet know, long as she had pondered it.