I wrote. I knew that, ever since I was born, and long before, you had
come once a year and lodged here for a night. I knew that you came because
my father was the parish clerk and let you spend the night in St Mary's
Church; and I know that, though he allowed it secretly, you did no harm
there, else he would never have allowed it. Now he is dead, and meanwhile
I keep the keys by the parson's wish until a new parish clerk is
appointed. And so I wrote, thinking to serve you for one year more as my
father had served you for many."

"I thank you, Miss Hester, and I beg your pardon. Yet there is a question
I need to ask, though you may very properly refuse to answer it.
Beyond my name and address and my yearly visits, what do you know of me?"

"Nothing at all."

"You must have wondered why I should do this strange thing, year by year?"

"To wonder is not to be inquisitive. Of course I have wondered; but I
supposed that you came to strengthen yourself in some purpose, or to keep
alive a memory--of someone dear to you, perhaps. Into what has brought
you to us year after year I have no wish at all to pry. But there is a
look on your face--and when children come to me with that look they are
unhappy with some secret, and want to be understood without having to tell
all particulars. A schoolmistress gets to know that look, and recognises
it sometimes in grown-up folk, even in quite old persons. Yes, and there
is another look on your face. You are not strong enough to go alone to
the church to-night, and you know it."

"I am going, I tell you."

He had pushed back his chair, and answered her, after a long pause, during
which he watched her removing the cloth.

"To-morrow you may have recovered; but to-night you are faint from that
attack. If you really must go, will you not let me go too, and take my
promise neither to look nor to listen?"

"Get me the key," he commanded, and walked obstinately to the door.
But there his strength betrayed him. He put out a hand against the jamb.
"I am no better than a child," he groaned, and turned weakly to her.
"Come if you will, girl. There is nothing to see, nothing to overhear."

She fetched cloak and bonnet and found the great keys. He and she stepped
out by a back entrance upon a lane leading to the church. The storm had
passed. Aloft, in a clear space of the sky, the moon rode and a few stars
shone down whitely, as if with freshly washed faces. Hester carried a
dark