s the lychgate, in the shadow of which stood
the clergyman, a gentlemanly looking young man, talking to a very aged
woman in a red cloak.

He saluted me courteously, and passed on, talking earnestly and kindly
to his aged companion, and so the remarkable couple went into the
church, and the bell stopped.

I looked around. Close to me, leaning against the gate, was a coarse
looking woman about fifty, who had just set down a red earthen pitcher
to rest herself, and seemed not disinclined for a gossip. And at the
same moment I saw a fat man, about my own age, with breeches,
unbuttoned at the knee, grey worsted stockings and slippers, and
looking altogether as if he was just out of bed, having had too much to
drink the night before; such a man, I say, I saw coming across the
road, towards us, with his hands in his pockets.

"Good morning," I said to the woman. "Pray what is the clergyman's
name?"

"Mr. Montague," she answered, with a curtsey.

"Does he have prayers every morning?"

"Every marnin' of his life," she said. "He's a Papister."

"You'm a fool, Cis Jewell," said the man, who had by this time arrived.
"You'm leading the gentleman wrong, he's a Pussyite."

"And there bain't much difference, I'm thinking, James Gosford," said
Cis Jewell.

I started. James Gosford had been one of my favourite old comrades in
times gone by, and here he was. Could it be he? Could this fat
red-faced man of sixty-one, be the handsome hard-riding young dandy of
forty years ago? It was he, doubtless, and in another moment I should
have declared myself, but a new interruption occurred.

The bell began again, and service was over. The old woman came out of
the porch and slowly down the pathway towards us.

"Is that all his congregation?" I asked.

"That's all, sir," said Gosford. "Sometimes some of they young villains
of boys gets in, and our old clerk, Jerry, hunts 'em round and round
all prayer time; but there's none goes regular except the old 'ooman."

"And she had need to pray a little more than other folks," said Cis
Jewell, folding her arms, and balancing herself in a conversational
attitude. "My poor old grandfather----"

Further conversation was stopped by the near approach of the old woman
herself, and I looked up at her with some little curiosity. A very old
woman she was surely; and while I seemed struggling with some sort of
recollection, she fixed her eyes upon me, and we knew one another.

"Geoffry Hamlyn," s