were pouring down the narrow streets from all the
churches round, while the great bell beat out its summons from the Norman
tower. The church was filled from end to end as they came in, meeting Dr.
Carrington at the door, and they all passed up together to the pew
reserved for the churchwarden, close beneath the pulpit.

As Isabel looked round her, it came upon her very forcibly what she had
begun to notice even at Great Keynes, that the religion preached there
did not fit the church in which it was set forth; and that, though great
efforts had been made to conform the building to the worship. There had
been no half measures at Northampton, for the Puritans had a loathing of
what they called a "mingle-mangle." Altars, footpaces, and piscinae had
been swept away and all marks of them removed, as well as the rood-loft
and every image in the building; the stained windows had been replaced by
plain glass painted white; the walls had been whitewashed from roof to
floor, and every suspicion of colour erased except where texts of
Scripture ran rigidly across the open wall spaces: "We are not under the
Law, but under Grace," Isabel read opposite her, beneath the clerestory
windows. And, above all, the point to which all lines and eyes converged,
was occupied no longer by the Table but by the tribunal of the Lord. Yet
underneath the disguise the old religion triumphed still. Beneath the
great plain orderly scheme, without depth of shadows, dominated by the
towering place of Proclamation where the crimson-faced herald waited to
begin, the round arches and the elaborate mouldings, and the cool depths
beyond the pillars, all declared that in the God for whom that temple was
built, there was mystery as well as revelation, Love as well as Justice,
condescension as well as Majesty, beauty as well as awfulness,
invitations as well as eternal decrees.

Isabel looked up presently, as the people still streamed in, and watched
the minister in his rustling Genevan gown, leaning with his elbows on the
Bible that rested open on the great tasselled velvet cushion before him.
Everything about him was on the grand scale; his great hands were clasped
and protruded over the edge of the Book; and his heavy dark face looked
menacingly round on the crowded church; he had the air of a melancholy
giant about to engage in some tragic pleasure. But Isabel's instinctive
dislike began to pass into positive terror so soon as he began to preach.

When the l