lesser testimony. Then,
when that provided impracticable, it was suggested that the stone be
reverently fashioned into a wall that should stand as a token. And when
even that could not be managed, the stone of the little church was
laid reverently into a stone pile; afterwards it was devoutly sold to a
building contractor, and, like so much else in life, was forgotten.

But the building of the church, no one, I think, will forget. The
Dean threw himself into the work. With his coat off and his white
shirt-sleeves conspicuous among the gang that were working at the
foundations, he set his hand to the shovel, himself guided the
road-scraper, urging on the horses; cheering and encouraging the men,
till they begged him to desist. He mingled with the stone-masons,
advising, helping, and giving counsel, till they pleaded with him
to rest. He was among the carpenters, sawing, hammering, enquiring,
suggesting, till they besought him to lay off. And he was night and day
with the architect's assistants, drawing, planning, revising, till the
architect told him to cut it out.

So great was his activity, that I doubt whether the new church would
ever have been finished, had not the wardens and the vestry men insisted
that Mr. Drone must take a holiday, and sent him on the Mackinaw trip up
the lakes,--the only foreign travel of the Dean's life.

So in due time the New Church was built and it towered above the maple
trees of Mariposa like a beacon on a hill. It stood so high that from
the open steeple of it, where the bells were, you could see all the
town lying at its feet, and the farmsteads to the south of it, and the
railway like a double pencil line, and Lake Wissanotti spread out like
a map. You could see and appreciate things from the height of the new
church,--such as the size and the growing wealth of Mariposa,--that you
never could have seen from the little stone church at all.

Presently the church was opened and the Dean preached his first sermon
in it, and he called it a Greater Testimony, and he said that it was an
earnest, or first fruit of endeavour, and that it was a token or pledge,
and he named it also a covenant. He said, too, that it was an anchorage
and a harbour and a lighthouse as well as being a city set upon a hill;
and he ended by declaring it an Ark of Refuge and notified them that
the Bible Class would meet in the basement of it on that and every other
third Wednesday.

In the opening months of prea