out of the fields. The church, surrounded by
yew-trees, stood in the middle of the village. The whitewashed walls
of the Parsonage blinked through an avenue of the same trees. Lull
said the church was a Presbyterian meeting-house, and on Sundays people
came from miles round, and sang psalms without any tunes, and the
minister preached a sermon two hours long, and then everybody ate
sandwiches in their pews, and the minister preached another sermon two
hours longer.

The children had often climbed up, and looked in at the church windows,
and the cold, bare inside and the square boxes for pews had added to
their dreary impressions of the place.

If it had not been for the snowdrops they would never have gone near
Castle Magee; but at the right time of year the churchyard was a white
drift of these flowers, and the sexton had often given them leave to
pick as many as they pleased. With a big bunch of snowdrops Jane felt
she could go straight home. Dinner would be over, of course, by that
time, but there would still be the afternoon to give to the new
pigeon-house. And how pleased her mother would be with the flowers.
All Jane's bad temper disappeared at the thought, and she would tie up
two little bunches with ivy leaves at the back for Fly and Honeybird.
She skipped along the road, making up romances to herself to while away
the three long miles. She was going to a ball in a blue satin dress
trimmed with pearls; then it was a dinner, and she wore black velvet
and diamonds; then a meet, and she had a green velvet habit, like the
picture of Miss Flora Macdonald Lull had nailed on the kitchen wall.

Soon she got tired of these thoughts.

"'Deed, I won't wear any of them things," she muttered; "everybody
wears them. I'll just go in my bare skin an' a pair of Lull's ould
boots." She laughed, and began to run. As she got near the village
the old feeling of hunger, native to the place, reminded her that
turnips would now be stacked behind the Parsonage, and she remembered
that it would be best to look for an open heap, for the last time she
and Mick had broken into one they found they had opened a potato heap
by mistake. She laughed as she thought of how cross the old farmer had
been when he had caught them filling up the hole again. Luckily, the
first heap she came to was open, so, picking out a good big turnip, she
went on till she came to the churchyard wall, and sat down there to eat
it. The village looked m