When the car swung off the road at the foot of the village into Parson's Tye, Mr. Trupp was in more sober mood. As the other three crossed the green to the church, he lingered behind. "Comin in then, Alf?" he asked. The chauffeur shook his head. "I know's too much, sir," he said firmly. "No good won't come of evil--as ever I heard tell." Mr. Trupp rolled away, coughing. "Alf turned moralist!" he muttered. The pair were to be married in church. For Ruth herself was "church" in the sense the working-class understand that word. Miss Caryll had taken considerable pains to effect her conversion, while her people, with the quiet tolerance of their kind, had made no objection. Ruth herself had been profoundly indifferent, and underwent the change mainly to oblige. But while she rarely attended divine service herself, and was neither interested in the religious community to which she belonged nor affected by it, on the vital occasions of her life she expected it to do its duty by her---to marry her, bury her, baptize and confirm her children; and she would have been astonished and aggrieved had it refused her the rites which were in her judgment her due. The great church with its hollow-timbered roof like the bottom of an upturned ship, its bell-ropes looped and hanging from the central tower above the transept, is called by some the Cathedral of the Downs. It was quiet now as a forest at evening, and empty save for Mr. and Mrs. Boam, straight-backed in black, Ruth sitting subdued between her father and mother, little Alice on her Granny's lap, and Ernie alone in the pew upon the right. There was about the little gathering something of the solemnity of the hills which hemmed them round. Mrs. Trupp, walking in the stillness up the aisle, was aware of it as she took her place at Ernie's side. Then in the silence the singing voice of a little child floated out like a silver bubble of sound. "Daddy," it said. Ruth shot at the man across the aisle a sudden lovely look of affection and intimate confidence; and one soul at least, kneeling there in the sunshine, felt that the word sealed the covenant between this wayfaring couple, still only starting on their pilgrimage, as no offices of any priest could do. THE END Doubleday, Page & Co. hope to publish _One Woman: being the sequel to Two Men_, next spring. THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N.Y. End of Project Gutenberg's Two Men: A Romance of Sussex, by Alfred Ollivant