roiling afternoon. The sun was pouring down on the grey tower of the
little church, and on the mildewed grave stones and the bushes of
rosemary and lavender, and the box edging that led to the Norman
doorway. A rambler rose rioted over the railings of a monument; its
crimson trusses of blossom veiled the broken urn inside. Over the wall
the green cliff-side stood out against the gleaming sea. Bees were
humming under the archway of the roof. Some swallows scintillated by
with gleaming wings. Not a soul was near. She was alone with the
sunshine and the birds and the flowers. There flashed across her a
strong memory of the day when she and Claudia and Morland had taken
their first walk to the cave, and had stopped to look at the church--the
Forsaken Merman Church, as Claudia always called it. How happy they had
been then, with no terrible shadow hanging over them! She could almost
hear Claudia's voice quoting the poem:--

"From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers,
But we stood without in the cold blowing airs."

It was just the opposite now, for she sat without in the heat, and
there was nobody inside saying prayers. The door stood open--not shut.
Something urged her to enter--some impulse so strong and so overpowering
that instinctively she rose and walked up the little path between the
lines of box edging. It was almost as if an invisible hand led her on,
under the groined porch and through the carved Norman doorway. How cool
and peaceful it was inside, in the soft, diffused golden light falling
on the sandstone pillars through the saint-filled windows.

Though no service was in progress, she had a sense that the prayers of
many generations lingered in the place, and made it holy. The haloed
saints in the east window smiled down at her with calm eyes. Had they
ever been in trouble as she was to-day? In their white robes and with
palms in their hands, they looked so infinitely removed from the
twentieth century. Yet their own times must have seemed absolutely
modern to them. There was nothing in their lives which could not be also
in ours. The same All-Father who gave them that perfect peace could give
it surely to us.

In the dim shadow of the chancel she dropped on her knees and
prayed--not a stilted, formal prayer, but a sort of intense, white-hot,
wordless passion of entreaty for that bright-haired boy whose life was
going so wrong.

As she rose to her feet again her eyes fell on the carved