The parish church at Kesterwick was unusually large and beautiful, being a relic of an age when, whatever men’s lives may have been, they spared neither their money nor their thought in rearing up fitting habitations to the Deity, whom they regarded perhaps with more of superstitious awe than true religious feeling. Standing as it did somewhat back from the sea, it alone had escaped the shock of the devouring waves, and remained till this day a monument of architectural triumph. Its tall tower, pointing like a great finger up to heaven, looked very solemn on that quiet September evening as the crowd of church-goers passed beneath its shadow into the old doorway, through which most of them had been carried to their christening, and would in due time be carried to their burial. At least so thought Eva and Dorothy, as they stood for a moment by the monument to “five unknown sailors,” washed ashore after a great gale, and buried in a common grave. How many suffering, erring human beings had stood upon the same spot and thought the same thoughts! How many more now sleeping in the womb of time would stand there and think them, when these two had suffered and erred their full, and been long forgotten! They formed a strange contrast, those two sweet women, as they passed together into the sacred stillness of the church—the one stately, dark, and splendid, with an unrestful trouble in her eyes; the other almost insignificant in figure, but pure and patient of face, and with steady blue eyes which never wavered. Did they guess, those two, as they walked thus together, how closely their destinies were linked? Did they know that each at heart was striving for the same prize—a poor one indeed, but still all the world to them? Perhaps they did, very vaguely, and it was the pressure of their common trouble that drew them closer together in those days. But if they did, they never spoke of it; and as for little Dorothy, she never dreamed of winning. She was content to be allowed to toil along in the painful race. When they reached the pew that the Ceswicks habitually occupied, they found Miss Ceswick and Florence already there. Jeremy had refused to come; he had a most unreasonable antipathy to parsons. Mr. Halford he liked, but of this new man he would have none. The general curiosity to see him was to Jeremy inexplicable, his opinion being that he should soon see a great deal more of him than he liked. “Just like a pack of girls running after a new doll,” he growled; “well, there is one thing, you will soon be tired of hearing him squeak.”