rtin Cannister, and by Stephen's own grandfather before him.

A sound sped into the air from the direction in which Castle Boterel
lay. It was the striking of the church clock, distinct in the still
atmosphere as if it had come from the tower hard by, which, wrapt in its
solitary silentness, gave out no such sounds of life.

'One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.' Stephen
carefully counted the strokes, though he well knew their number
beforehand. Nine o'clock. It was the hour Elfride had herself named as
the most convenient for meeting him.

Stephen stood at the door of the porch and listened. He could have heard
the softest breathing of any person within the porch; nobody was there.
He went inside the doorway, sat down upon the stone bench, and waited
with a beating heart.

The faint sounds heard only accentuated the silence. The rising and
falling of the sea, far away along the coast, was the most important.
A minor sound was the scurr of a distant night-hawk. Among the minutest
where all were minute were the light settlement of gossamer fragments
floating in the air, a toad humbly labouring along through the
grass near the entrance, the crackle of a dead leaf which a worm was
endeavouring to pull into the earth, a waft of air, getting nearer and
nearer, and expiring at his feet under the burden of a winged seed.

Among all these soft sounds came not the only soft sound he cared to
hear--the footfall of Elfride.

For a whole quarter of an hour Stephen sat thus intent, without moving
a muscle. At the end of that time he walked to the west front of the
church. Turning the corner of the tower, a white form stared him in the
face. He started back, and recovered himself. It was the tomb of young
farmer Jethway, looking still as fresh and as new as when it was
first erected, the white stone in which it was hewn having a singular
weirdness amid the dark blue slabs from local quarries, of which the
whole remaining gravestones were formed.

He thought of the night when he had sat thereon with Elfride as his
companion, and well remembered his regret that she had received, even
unwillingly, earlier homage than his own. But his present tangible
anxiety reduced such a feeling to sentimental nonsense in comparison;
and he strolled on over the graves to the border of the churchyard,
whence in the daytime could be clearly seen the vicarage and the present
residence of the Swancourts. No footstep was discernible