432 PRÆTERITA-II

upwards of eleven years, and had got them into that cottage; her husband having been in his service, and he fretted himself, she said, too much, about getting them into it, and never lived to see them in it after all, dying of decline in London. She spoke of him with tears in her eyes. I looked at the books lying on the table, well used all of them, and found three Bibles, three Prayer Books, a treatise on practical Christianity, another on seriousness in religion, and Baxter’s Saints’ Rest. I asked her if they read no books but religious ones. ‘No, sir; I should be very sorry if there were any others in my house,’ said she. As I took up the largest Bible, she said ‘it was a nice print, but sadly tattered; she wished she could get it bound.’ This I promised to get done for her, and left her much pleased.

“It had rained hard while I stayed in the cottage, but had ceased when I went on, and presently appeared such a bright bar of streaky sky in the west, seen over the glittering hedges, as made my heart leap again, it put so much of old feelings into me of far-away hills and fountains of morning light; and the sun came out presently, and every shake of the trees shook down more light upon the grass. And so I came to the village and stood leaning on the churchyard gate, looking at the sheep nibbling and resting among the graves (newly watered they lay, and fresh, like a field of precious seed). One narrow stream of light ran in ups and downs across them, but the shadow of the church fell over most-the pretty little grey church, now one dark mass against the intense golden glittering sky; and to make it sweeter still, the churchyard itself rose steeply, so that its own grand line came against this same light at last.”¹

¹ [For a reference to this passage by Miss Alexander, see Vol. XXXII. p. 312.]

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