ning among the trees--leading up
to moonlight effects and reunion. There was no organ to play "off," but
the bells were an excellent substitute, and it was these that presently
melted the heart of Gertie.

When the Major had disappeared, limping, the two climbed over the stile
and sat down with their bundles under the hedge, but they presently
found that they had chosen something of a thoroughfare. Voices came
along presently, grew louder, and stopped as the speakers climbed the
stile. The first pair was of a boy and girl, who instantly clasped again
mutual waists, and went off up the path across the field to the
churchyard without noticing the two tramps; their heads were very near
together.

Then other couples came along, old and young, and twice a trio--one, two
young men in black, who skirmished on either side of a very sedate girl
in white; one, two girls who shoved one another, and giggled, walking in
step three yards behind another young man with his hat on one side, who
gloried in being talked at and pretended to be rapt in abstraction. Then
some children came; then a family--papa walking severely apart in a silk
hat, and mamma, stout and scarlet-faced, in the midst of the throng.
Finally there came along a very old Darby and Joan, who with many
Yorkshire ejaculations helped one another over the stile, and moved on
with bent heads, scolding one another affectionately. It was as this
last couple reached the spot where the path ran into the corn that the
peal of four bells broke out, and Gertie broke down.

Frank had not been noticing her particularly. He was gloomy himself; the
novelty of the whole affair had gone; the Major was becoming
intolerable, and Frank's religion was beginning to ebb from his
emotions. Mass this morning had not been a success from an emotional
point of view; he had had an uncomfortable seat on a pitch-pine bench in
a tin church with an American organ; the very young priest had been
tiresome and antipathetic.... Frank had done his best, but he was tired
and bored; the little church had been very hot, and it was no longer any
fun to be stared at superciliously by a stout tradesman as he came out
into the hot sunshine afterwards.

Just now he had been watching the figures make their appearance from the
stile, re-form groups and dwindle slowly down to the corn, and their
heads and shoulders bob along above it--all with a kind of resentment.
These people had found their life; he was still