“You must take care not to sleep, John,” said Dr. Richard, shaking his head, “that is the great thing. You’ll not snore if you don’t sleep.” “I donnow that,” said John doubtfully, taking up his shillings. The old soul was hazy, and did not quite know what he was blamed for. Of all the few enjoyments he had, that Summer doze in the warm atmosphere was perhaps the sweetest. Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care--John felt it to be one of the best things in this world, though he did not know what any idle book had said. At nine o’clock every morning James Tolladay sallied out of his cottage, with the key of the chapel, opened the door, and began to tug at the rope, which dangled so temptingly just out of the reach of the children, when they came to see their grandfathers and grandmothers at the almshouses. The chapel was not a very good specimen of architecture, having been built in the seventeenth century; and the bell which James Tolladay rung was not much of a bell; but still it marked nine o’clock to the village, the clergyman of the parish being a quiet and somewhat indolent person, who had, up to this time, resisted the movement in favor of daily services. Tolladay kept on ringing while the old people stumbled past him into their benches, and the Doctor, in his surplice, and little Mrs. Richard in her little trim bonnet--till Miss Augustine came along the path from the gate like a figure in a procession, with her veil on her head in Summer, and her hood in Winter, and with her hands folded into her long, hanging sleeves. Miss Augustine always came alone, a solitary figure in the sunshine, and walked abstracted and solemn across the garden, and up the length of the chapel to the seat which was left for her on one side of the altar rails. Mrs. Richard had a place on the other side, but Miss Augustine occupied a sort of stall, slightly raised, and very visible to all the congregation. The Austin arms were on this stall, a sign of proprietorship not perhaps quite in keeping with the humble meaning of the chapel; and Miss Augustine had blazoned it with a legend in very ecclesiastical red and blue--“Pray for us,” translated with laudable intentions, out of the Latin, in order to be understood by the congregation, but sent back into obscurity by the church decorator, whose letters were far too good art to be comprehensible. The old women, blinking under their old dingy bonnets, which some of them still insisted upon wearing “in the fashion,” with here and there a tumbled red and yellow rose, notwithstanding all that Mrs. Richard could say; and the old men with their heads sunk into the shabby collars of their old coats, sitting tremulous upon the benches, over which Miss Augustine could look from her high seat, immediately finding out any defaulter--were a pitiful assemblage enough, in that unloveliness of age and weakness which the very poor have so little means of making beautiful; but they were not without interest, nor their