h in gratitude to God and St. Tugdual on
the very spot where they escaped from the sea, of how they quarrelled
about the site because each sister wished to commemorate the exact spot
where she was saved, and of how finally one built the tower on her spot
and the other built the church on hers, which was the reason why the
church and the tower were not joined to this day. When Mark went home
that afternoon, he searched among his grandfather's books until he found
the story of St. Tugdual who, it seemed, was a holy man in Brittany, so
holy that he was summoned to be Pope of Rome. When he had been Pope for
a few months, an angel appeared to him and said that he must come back
at once to Brittany, because since he went to Rome all the women were
become barren.

"But how am I to go back all the way from Rome to Brittany?" St. Tugdual
asked.

"I have a white horse waiting for you," the angel replied.

And sure enough there was a beautiful white horse with wings, which
carried St. Tugdual back to Brittany in a few minutes.

"What does it mean when a woman becomes barren?" Mark inquired of his
mother.

"It means when she does not have any more children, darling," said Mrs.
Lidderdale, who did not believe in telling lies about anything.

And because she answered her son simply, her son did not perplex himself
with shameful speculations, but was glad that St. Tugdual went back home
so that the women of Brittany were able to have children again.

Everything was simple at Nancepean except the parishioners; but Mark was
still too young and too simple himself to apprehend their complicacy.
The simplest thing of all was the Vicar's religion, and at an age when
for most children religion means being dressed up to go into the
drawing-room and say how d'you do to God, Mark was allowed to go to
church in his ordinary clothes and after church to play at whatever he
wanted to play, so that he learned to regard the assemblage of human
beings to worship God as nothing more remarkable than the song of birds.
He was too young to have experienced yet a personal need of religion;
but he had already been touched by that grace of fellowship which is
conferred upon a small congregation, the individual members of which are
in church to please themselves rather than to impress others. This was
always the case in the church of Nancepean, which had to contend not
merely with the popularity of methodism, but also with the situation of
the Chapel