to introduce to you--he's in Orders, you know--scholar of
Balliol, Fellow of All Souls, and what not. High Anglican, too--he'll
be a bishop one of these days, if money doesn't make him lazy.
He's inside, dancing with delight in front of your chancel-screen--or,
rather, the remains of it. Church architecture is his craze just now--
that and Church History. Between ourselves"--Sir Harry glanced over his
shoulder--"he has a bee or two in his bonnet; but that's as it should
be. Every lad at his age wants to eat up the world."

Parson Jack could remember no such ambition. They passed into the
church together.

Now the surprise which awaits you in Langona Church is its chancel,
which stands high above the level of the nave, and, rising suddenly
beneath a fine Early English arch, carries the eye upward to the altar
with a strange illusion of distance. Even in those days the first
impression was one of rare, almost singular, beauty--an impression lost
in a series of small pangs as your eye rested on the ruinous details one
by one. For of the great screen nothing remained but two tall uprights,
surmounted by hideous knops--the addition of some local carpenter.
Between the lozenge-shaped shafts of the choir arches, the worm-riddled
parclose screens dripped sawdust in little heaps. Down in the nave,
bench-ends leaned askew or had been broken up, built as panels into deal
pews, and daubed with paint; the floor was broken and ran in uneven
waves; the walls shed plaster, and a monstrous gallery blocked the
belfry arch. Upon this gallery Parson Jack had spent most of his
careful, unsightly carpentry, for the simple reason that it had been
unsafe; and, for the simple reason that they had let in the rain, he had
provided half a dozen windows with new panes, solid enough, but in
appearance worthy only to cover cucumbers.

As he entered with Sir Harry, the Rev. Clement Vyell swung round upon
him eagerly, but paused with a just perceptible start at sight of his
unclerical garb.

"Let me introduce you, Clem. This is Mr. Flood."

Parson Jack bowed, and let his eyes travel around the church, which he
had often enough pitied, but of which he now for the first time felt
ashamed.

"We're in a sad mess, I'm afraid," he muttered.

"It's most interesting, nevertheless," Clement Vyell answered. He was a
thin-faced youth with a high pedagogic voice. "Better a church in this
condition than one restored out of all whooping--though