hat there's no living night nor day. 'Tis just for all the world
like people frying fish: fry, fry, fry, all day long in my poor head,
till I don't know whe'r I'm here or yonder. There, God A'mighty will
find it out sooner or later, I hope, and relieve me.'

'Now, my deafness,' said Mr. Swancourt impressively, 'is a dead silence;
but William Worm's is that of people frying fish in his head. Very
remarkable, isn't it?'

'I can hear the frying-pan a-fizzing as naterel as life,' said Worm
corroboratively.

'Yes, it is remarkable,' said Mr. Smith.

'Very peculiar, very peculiar,' echoed the vicar; and they all then
followed the path up the hill, bounded on each side by a little stone
wall, from which gleamed fragments of quartz and blood-red marbles,
apparently of inestimable value, in their setting of brown alluvium.
Stephen walked with the dignity of a man close to the horse's head, Worm
stumbled along a stone's throw in the rear, and Elfride was nowhere
in particular, yet everywhere; sometimes in front, sometimes behind,
sometimes at the sides, hovering about the procession like a butterfly;
not definitely engaged in travelling, yet somehow chiming in at points
with the general progress.

The vicar explained things as he went on: 'The fact is, Mr. Smith,
I didn't want this bother of church restoration at all, but it
was necessary to do something in self-defence, on account of those
d----dissenters: I use the word in its scriptural meaning, of course,
not as an expletive.'

'How very odd!' said Stephen, with the concern demanded of serious
friendliness.

'Odd? That's nothing to how it is in the parish of Twinkley. Both the
churchwardens are----; there, I won't say what they are; and the clerk
and the sexton as well.'

'How very strange!' said Stephen.

'Strange? My dear sir, that's nothing to how it is in the parish of
Sinnerton. However, as to our own parish, I hope we shall make some
progress soon.'

'You must trust to circumstances.'

'There are no circumstances to trust to. We may as well trust in
Providence if we trust at all. But here we are. A wild place, isn't it?
But I like it on such days as these.'

The churchyard was entered on this side by a stone stile, over which
having clambered, you remained still on the wild hill, the within not
being so divided from the without as to obliterate the sense of open
freedom. A delightful place to be buried in, postulating that delight
can accompany a man to