Her father got better by slow degrees, and her mother
was pleased by the tailor's good pieces of work; showing the
neatly-placed patches with as much pride as many matrons take in new
clothes now-a-days. And the weather cleared up into a dim kind of
autumnal fineness, into anything but an Indian summer as far as
regarded gorgeousness of colouring, for on that coast the mists and
sea fogs early spoil the brilliancy of the foliage. Yet, perhaps,
the more did the silvery grays and browns of the inland scenery
conduce to the tranquillity of the time,--the time of peace and rest
before the fierce and stormy winter comes on. It seems a time for
gathering up human forces to encounter the coming severity, as well
as of storing up the produce of harvest for the needs of winter. Old
people turn out and sun themselves in that calm St. Martin's summer,
without fear of 'the heat o' th' sun, or the coming winter's rages,'
and we may read in their pensive, dreamy eyes that they are weaning
themselves away from the earth, which probably many may never see
dressed in her summer glory again.

Many such old people set out betimes, on the Sunday afternoon to
which Sylvia had been so looking forward, to scale the long flights
of stone steps--worn by the feet of many generations--which led up
to the parish church, placed on a height above the town, on a great
green area at the summit of the cliff, which was the angle where the
river and the sea met, and so overlooking both the busy crowded
little town, the port, the shipping, and the bar on the one hand,
and the wide illimitable tranquil sea on the other--types of life
and eternity. It was a good situation for that church.
Homeward-bound sailors caught sight of the tower of St Nicholas, the
first land object of all. They who went forth upon the great deep
might carry solemn thoughts with them of the words they had heard
there; not conscious thoughts, perhaps--rather a distinct if dim
conviction that buying and selling, eating and marrying, even life
and death, were not all the realities in existence. Nor were the
words that came up to their remembrance words of sermons preached
there, however impressive. The sailors mostly slept through the
sermons; unless, indeed, there were incidents such as were involved
in what were called 'funeral discourses' to be narrated. They did
not recognize their daily faults or temptations under the grand
aliases befitting their appearance from a preacher's mo