oom.

"I did Churchwarden Joliffe an injustice," said Mr Sharnall, with the
reflective mood that succeeds a hearty meal; "his sausages are good.
Put on some more coal, Mr Westray; it is a sinful luxury, a fire in
September, and coal at twenty-five shillings a ton; but we must have
_some_ festivity to inaugurate the restoration and your advent. Fill a
pipe yourself, and then pass me the tobacco."

"Thank you, I do not smoke," Westray said; and, indeed, he did not look
like a smoker. He had something of the thin, unsympathetic traits of
the professional water-drinker in his face, and spoke as if he regarded
smoking as a crime for himself, and an offence for those of less lofty
principles than his own.

The organist lighted his pipe, and went on:

"This is an airy house--sanitary enough to suit our friend the doctor;
every window carefully ventilated on the crack-and-crevice principle.
It was an old inn once, when there were more people hereabouts; and if
the rain beats on the front, you can still read the name through the
colouring--the Hand of God. There used to be a market held outside, and
a century or more ago an apple-woman sold some pippins to a customer
just before this very door. He said he had paid for them, and she said
he had not; they came to wrangling, and she called Heaven to justify
her. `God strike me dead if I have ever touched your money!' She was
taken at her word, and fell dead on the cobbles. They found clenched in
her hand the two coppers for which she had lost her soul, and it was
recognised at once that nothing less than an inn could properly
commemorate such an exhibition of Divine justice. So the Hand of God
was built, and flourished while Cullerne flourished, and fell when
Cullerne fell. It stood empty ever since I can remember it, till Miss
Joliffe took it fifteen years ago. She elevated it into Bellevue Lodge,
a select boarding-house, and spent what little money that niggardly
landlord old Blandamer would give for repairs, in painting out the Hand
of God on the front. It was to be a house of resort for Americans who
came to Cullerne. They say in our guide-book that Americans come to see
Cullerne Church because some of the Pilgrim Fathers' fathers are buried
in it; but I've never seen any Americans about. They never come to me;
I have been here boy and man for sixty years, and never knew an American
do a pennyworth of good to Cullerne Church; and they never did a
pennyworth of