offered him.

Mr Sharnall's resources in the way of men's voices were so limited that
he was by no means unused to finding himself short of a voice-part on
the one side or the other. He had done his best to remedy the
deficiency in the Psalms by supplying the missing part with his left
hand, but as he began the _Magnificat_ he was amazed to hear a mellow
and fairly strong tenor taking part in the service with feeling and
precision. It was the stranger who stood in the gap, and when the first
surprise was past, the choir welcomed him as being versed in their own
arts, and Clerk Janaway forgot the presumption of his entrance and even
the rebellious conduct of Mr Milligan. The men and boys sang with new
life; they wished, in fact, that so knowledgeable a person should be
favourably impressed, and the service was rendered in a more creditable
way than Cullerne Church had known for many a long day. Only the
stranger was perfectly unmoved. He sang as if he had been a lay-vicar
all his life, and when the _Magnificat_ was ended, and Mr Sharnall
could look through the curtains of the organ-loft, the organist saw him
with a Bible devoutly following Mr Noot in the second lesson.

He was a man of forty, rather above the middle height, with dark
eyebrows and dark hair, that was beginning to turn grey. His hair,
indeed, at once attracted the observer's attention by its thick
profusion and natural wavy curl. He was clean-shaven, his features were
sharply cut without being thin, and there was something contemptuous
about the firm mouth. His nose was straight, and a powerful face gave
the impression of a man who was accustomed to be obeyed. To anyone
looking at him from the other side of the choir, he presented a
remarkable picture, for which the black oak of Abbot Vinnicomb's stalls
supplied a frame. Above his head the canopy went soaring up into
crockets and finials, and on the woodwork at the back was painted a
shield which nearer inspection would have shown to be the Blandamer
cognisance, with its nebuly bars of green and silver. It was, perhaps,
so commanding an appearance that made red-haired Patrick Ovens take out
an Australian postage-stamp which he had acquired that very day, and
point out to the boy next to him the effigy of Queen Victoria sitting
crowned in a gothic chair.

The stranger seemed to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the
performance; he bore his part in the service bravely, and, being
furnished wi