My question was answered by the sound of the psalm coming up from the hall, where the household were gathered for family prayer. This reminded me that it was the Sabbath-day, the only day on which we used to sing a psalm at morning prayers. I knelt at the window while they sang. I heard my father's voice leading the psalm, and Aunt Dorothy's deep second, and Aunt Gretel's tremulous treble; but not Roger's. I felt so strange to be listening, instead of joining in the song. Such a thing had never happened to me before. Aunt Gretel must have thought it good for me to sleep on, and have crept down stairs like a ghost. But the feeling of being _outside_ was terrible to me that morning. It brought back my old terror about being "on the wrong side of the tree." But not so much for myself. For Roger! for Roger! What if he should be feeling left outside like this!--outside the prayers, outside the hymns, outside the holy family gatherings, outside the light and the welcome! That morning I felt something of what must be meant by the _outer_ darkness. The darkness outside! Even the "darkness" did not seem to me so terrible as the being _outside_! For it showed there was a within--a home; light within, music within, the Father's welcome within and we outside! Could it be that Roger was feeling this now? All this rushed through my heart as I knelt to the music of the family psalm. Then, dressing hastily, I went down. "Roger has been here, Olive," said my Father, answering my looks. "He brought the chirurgeon to the Hall, and came home an hour since, and then went back again to watch." "Then Sir Launcelot is not out of danger," I said. "No," he replied; "but there is hope." There was no morning walk for us that day. My Father went to his chamber, my aunts to theirs, and I to the chamber where the dried herbs lay, partly because it was Roger's and my Sunday parliament-house, and partly because from it I could see the towers of Davenant Hall. In our Puritan household we were brought up with great faith in the virtues of solitude. A very solemn part of our ritual was, "Thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and shut thy door, and pray to thy Father which is in secret." "The one minute and unmistakable rubric," my Father called it, "in the New Testament." For he used to say, "not only is the solitary place the place for the Redeemer's agonies and the apostle's bitter weeping; it is the place of the largest assemblies. For therein passing the barriers of the congregation, we enter into the assembly and Church of the first-born, and into the temple not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Any religion," said he, "whose secret springs do not exceed its surface waters, will evaporate in the burden and heat of the day." We went to church as usual, and slowly and silently we were coming away, avoiding as much as possible the usual greetings with neighbours, and I feeling especially anxious to escape Placidia's sympathy.