were tower, nave, and chancel covered with the dark
green leaves, which had to be kept cut back or they would have soon
covered up the windows; and even then, long green shoots were dangling
about in all directions, ready to take advantage of a week or two's
neglect, and commence veiling the old stone mullioned windows.

This was Fred's first visit to the church, for on the first Sundays of
his stay the days had been lowering, and Mr Inglis read prayers in the
dining-room; and now that the lad followed his cousins out of the bright
sunshine, through the old porch, and into the dim venerable-looking
building, everything struck him as being so very different from what he
had been accustomed to see in London. Here there were the bare
whitewashed walls, with the old tablets upon them, and here and there an
old rusty helmet, or a breastplate and a pair of gauntlets. Then there
were the quaint old brasses of a knight or squire and his wife, with a
step-like row of children by their side, and all let in the old blue
slabs that paved the floor, ever which the worshippers of succeeding
generations had passed for hundreds of years since. Then, too, there
was the recumbent figure of the Knight Templar lying cross-legged, with
his feet resting upon a dog, or some curious heraldic beast, and carved
to represent his having worn chain, armour; the old oak pulpit; the
fragments of stained glass in the windows; and, above all, the quaint
appearance of many of the country people, dressed as they were in their
Sunday best. These were among the things that took Fred's especial
attention when he first entered the old village church; but when,
instead of an organ, the choir commenced singing to the accompaniment of
an old clarionet, a bassoon, and bass viol, Fred was completely
astonished, for he had never been in a church before where there was not
an imposing-looking instrument, with its large rows of gilt pipes.
However, the hymn, in spite of the bad accompaniment, was very sweetly
sung, and the service beautifully read in the soft silence of that old,
old church, with the thousand scents of the country floating in through
the open doors and windows, like Nature's own incense entering the
temple of Nature's God.

Fred sat and listened, and by degrees all that was quaint and odd seemed
to fade away, and leave nothing but the solemn stillness of the place,
with the calm impressive voice of the clergyman telling of the goodness
and lov