Tilda remarked that the company took their new positions with some formality. The shepherd alone comported himself carelessly, slouching around to the back of the fire, where he lit a clay pipe from the embers and seated himself on one of the ingle-ends, so that his tobacco smoke had a clear passage up the chimney. Then, almost before the children knew what was happening, the Minister gave out a hymn. All sang it lustily, and when it was ended all dropped on their knees. The Minister broke into prayer--at first in smooth, running sentences, formal thanksgivings for the feast just concluded, for the plenty of seedtime and harvest, for the kindly fruits of the earth, with invocations of blessing upon the house and the family. But by and by, as these petitions grew more intimate, his breath came in short gasps. "O the Blood!" he began to cry; "the precious Blood of Redemption!" And at intervals one or other of his listeners answered "Amen!" "Hallelujah!" Tilda wondered what on earth it was all about; wondered too--for she knelt with her back to the great fireplace--if the shepherd had laid by his pipe and was kneeling among the ashes. Something in the Minister's voice had set her brain in a whirl, and kept it whirling. "Glory! Glory! The Blood! Glory be for the Blood!" And with that, of a sudden the man was shouting a prayer for _her_--for her and Arthur Miles, "that these two lambs also might be led home with the flock, and sealed--sealed with the Blood, with the precious Blood, with the ever-flowing Blood of Redemption--"