rust it will dawn
again and again for us yet on many more future anniversaries. The
place, too, was crammed, contrary to Lady Dasher's fears concerning the
spread of unbelief and the degeneracy of the present age. Everybody was
there that could go at all, for it was a year in which we had to be
specially mindful of mercies vouchsafed to us. Even old Shuffler, who
had not been seen inside a place of public worship before within the
memory of man, was not an absentee.

I was not thinking of him, however, nor of the display which the
decorations made, nor of the congregation--indeed, I hardly attended to
the service. All my thoughts were centred on Min.

A madonna-like face, a pair of honest, steadfast, speaking, grey eyes
were ever before me; although I could not actually see her, except when
we stood up during the service, according to the ordinances of the
rubric, as she sat a long way off. Notwithstanding my usual attachment
towards them, I felt inclined to quarrel with the high pews that hid her
from my sight; and, I'm afraid, despised Bishop Burnet for his
innovation. The vicar, they told me afterwards, preached a simple,
beautiful sermon, that struck home to the hearts of every one present;
but I heard none of it. My sermon was in my heart, and bore for its
text one little word of four letters. O Min, Min! you had a good deal
to answer for.

"Long was the good man's sermon,
Yet it seemed not so to me;
For he spoke of Ruth the beautiful,
And still I thought of thee.

"Long was the prayer he uttered,
Yet it seemed not so to me;
For in my heart I prayed with him,
And still I thought of thee!"

After service, of course everybody met everybody else, each of their own
respective little world, at the church door, exchanging those good
wishes and seasonable greetings proper to the day.

There was a grand throng without the porch. Horner was there. It would
have been nothing at all without him and his eye-glass. He did not
appear to bear me any hard feelings, I was glad to see, for my
unkindness of the morning. He nodded affably, and said "'do!" to me, in
his usual way, as if he had not met me before.

Min and her mother did not linger as did the other parishioners; so, I
had only an opportunity of a passing bow, without that other tender
little hand-clasp which I had hoped for. But she looked at me, and that
was something.

Lady Dasher, however, stopped for a minute or two; so did h