for eight months, when the old Marian rector, the elder brother
of the squire, had died.

It was now late, so Anthony and Isabel were conducted immediately to the
Hall, an old house immediately adjoining the churchyard; and here, too,
the windows were blazing with welcome, and the tall squire, Mr. Brian,
with his wife and children behind, was standing before the bright
hall-door at the top of the steps. The men and boys that had brought them
so far, and were standing in the little court with their torches
uplifted, now threw themselves on their knees to receive the priest's
blessing, before they went home; and Anthony blessed them and thanked
them, and went indoors with his sister, strangely moved and uplifted.

* * * *

The two following days were full of hard work and delight for Anthony. He
was to say mass at half-past six next morning, and came out of the house
a little after six o'clock; the sun was just rising to his right over a
shoulder of Skiddaw, which dominated the eastern horizon; and all round
him, stretched against the sky in all directions, were the high purple
moors in the strange dawn-light. Immediately in front of him, not thirty
yards away, stood the church, with its tower, two aisles, and a chapel on
a little promontory of rock which jutted out over the bed of the torrent
along which he had climbed the night before; and to his left lay the
straggling street of the village. All was perfectly still except for the
dash of the stream over the rocks; but from one or two houses a thin
skein of smoke was rising straight into the air. Anthony stood rapt in
delight, and drew long breaths of the cool morning air, laden with
freshness and fragrant with the mellow scent of the heather and the
autumnal smells.

He was completely taken by surprise when he entered the church, for, for
the first time since he could remember, he saw an English church in its
true glory. It had been built for a priory-church of Holm-Cultram, but
for some reason had never been used as that, and had become simply the
parish church of the village. Across the centre and the northern aisle
ran an elaborate screen, painted in rich colours, and the southern
chapel, which ran eastwards of the porch, was separated in a similar way
from the rest of the church. Over the central screen was the great rood,
with its attendant figures, exquisitely carved and painted; in every
direction, as Anthony loo