Then Anne invaded them, for conversation, and while Catharine, unable to hide her fatigue, lay speechless, Anne chattered about her master. Her indignation was boundless that any hand could be lifted against him in his own parish. "Why he strips himself bare for them, he does!" And--with Mary unconsciously leading her--out came story after story, in the racy Mercian vernacular, illustrating a good man's life, and all His little nameless unremembered acts Of kindness and of love. As they drove slowly home through the sad village street they perceived Henry Barron calling at some of the stricken houses. The squire was always punctilious, and his condolences might be counted on. Beside him walked a young man with a jaunty step, a bored sallow face, and a long moustache which he constantly caressed. Mary supposed him to be the squire's second son, "Mr. Maurice," whom nobody liked. Then the church, looming through the dusk; lights shining through its fine perpendicular windows, and the sound of familiar hymns surging out into the starry twilight. Catharine turned eagerly to her companion. "Shall we go in?" The emotion of one to whom religious utterance is as water to the thirsty spoke in her voice. But Mary caught and held her. "No, dearest, no!--come home and rest." And when Catharine had yielded, and they were safely past the lighted church, Mary breathed more freely. Instinctively she felt that certain barriers had gone down before the tragic tumult, the human action of the day; let well alone! And for the first time, as she sat in the darkness, holding her mother's hand, and watching the blackness of the woods file past under the stars, she confessed her love to her own heart--trembling, yet exultant. * * * * * Meanwhile in the crowded church, men and women who had passed that afternoon through the extremes of hate and sorrow unpacked their hearts in singing and prayer. The hymns rose and fell through the dim red sandstone church--symbol of the endless plaint of human life, forever clamouring in the ears of Time; and Meynell's address, as he stood on the chancel steps, almost among the people, the disfiguring strips of plaster on the temple and brow sharply evident between the curly black hair and the dark hollows of the eyes, sank deep into grief-stricken souls. It was the plain utterance of a man, with the prophetic gift, speaking to human beings to whom, through years of checkered life, he had given all that a man can give of service and of soul. He stood there as the living expression of their conscience, their better mind, conceived as the mysterious voice of a Divine power in man; and in the name of that Power, and its direct message to the human soul embodied in the tale we call Christianity, he bade them repent their bloodthirst, and hope in God for their dead. He spoke amid weeping; and from that night forward one might have thought his power unshakeable, at least among his own people.