crimson cord, but the
stranger lifted the cord from its hook, and sat down in the first
reserved seat, as if the place belonged to him.

Clerk Janaway was outraged, and bustled up the steps after him like an
angry turkey-cock.

"Come, come!" he said, touching the intruder on the shoulder; "you
cannot sit here; these are the Fording seats, and kep' for Lord
Blandamer's family."

"I will make room if Lord Blandamer brings his family," the stranger
said; and, seeing that the old man was returning to the attack, added,
"Hush! that is enough."

The clerk looked at him again, and then turned back to his own place,
routed.

"_And in that day they shall roar against thee like the roaring of the
sea, and if one look unto the land behold darkness and sorrow, and the
light is darkened in the heavens thereof_," said Mr Noot, and shut the
book, with a glance of general fulmination through his great round
spectacles.

The choir, who had been interested spectators of this conflict of
lawlessness as personified in the intruder, and authority as in the
clerk, rose to their feet as the organ began the _Magnificat_.

The singing-men exchanged glances of amusement, for they were not
altogether averse to seeing the clerk worsted. He was an autocrat in
his own church, and ruffled them now and again with what they called his
bumptiousness. Perhaps he did assume a little as he led the procession,
for he forgot at times that he was a peaceable servant of the sanctuary,
and fancied, as he marched mace in hand to the music of the organ, that
he was a daring officer leading a forlorn hope. That very afternoon he
had had a heated discussion in the vestry with Mr Milligan, the bass,
on a question of gardening, and the singer, who still smarted under the
clerk's overbearing tongue, was glad to emphasise his adversary's defeat
by paying attention to the intruder.

The tenor on the cantoris side was taking holiday that day, and Mr
Milligan availed himself of the opportunity to offer the absentee's copy
of the service to the intruder, who was sitting immediately behind him.
He turned round, and placed the book, open at the _Magnificat_, before
the stranger with much deference, casting as he faced round again a look
of misprision at Janaway, of which the latter was quick to appreciate,
the meaning.

This by-play was lost upon the stranger, who nodded his acknowledgment
of the civility, and turned to the study of the score which had been