afraid of the wood,
perceiving nothing round him now except an assemblage of menacing
trunks, a slow gathering of angry and forbidding branches. The silence
of the day was dreadful in this wood, and Mark fled from it until he
emerged upon a brimming clover-ley full of drunken bees, a merry
clover-ley dancing in the sun, across which the sound of church bells
was being blown upon a honeyed wind. Mark welcomed the prospect of
seeing ugly people again after the humiliation inflicted upon him by the
wood; and he followed a footpath at the far end of the ley across
several stiles, until he stood beneath the limes that overhung the
churchyard gate and wondered if he should go inside to the service. The
bells were clanging an agitated final appeal to the worshippers; and
Mark, unable to resist, allowed himself to flow toward the cool dimness
within. There with a thrill he recognized the visible signs of his
childhood's religion, and now after so many years he perceived with new
eyes an unfamiliar beauty in the crossings and genuflexions, in the
pictures and images. The world which had lately seemed so jejune was
crowded like a dream, a dream moreover that did not elude the
recollection of it in the moment of waking, but that stayed with him
for the rest of his life as the evidence of things not seen, which is
Faith.

It was during the Gospel that Mark began to realize that what was being
said and done at the Altar demanded not merely his attention but also
his partaking. All the services he had attended since he came to
Slowbridge had demanded nothing from him, and even when he was at
Nancepean he had always been outside the sacred mysteries. But now on
this Whit-sunday morning he heard in the Gospel:

_Hereafter I will not talk much with you: for the prince of this world
cometh and hath nothing in me._

And while he listened it seemed that Jesus Christ was departing from
him, and that unless he were quick to offer himself he should be left to
the prince of this world; so black was Mark's world in those days that
the Prince of it meant most unmistakably the Prince of Darkness, and the
prophecy made him shiver with affright. With conviction he said the
Nicene Creed, and when the celebrating priest, a tall fair man, with a
gentle voice and of a mild and benignant aspect, went up into the pulpit
and announced that there would be a confirmation in his church on the
Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Mark felt i