ally sent her downstairs on the best of terms with herself and
the world at large.

There was no one about, as Joan had accompanied her father to church,
so Diana sauntered out on to the flagged path and paced idly up and
down, waiting for their return. The square, grey tower of the church,
hardly more than a stone's throw distant from the Rectory, was visible
through a gap in the trees where a short cut, known as the "church
path" wound its way through the copse that hedged the garden. It was
an ancient little church, boasting a very beautiful thirteenth century
window, which, in a Philistine past, had been built up and rough-cast
outside, and had only been discovered in the course of some repairs
that were being made to one of the walls. The inhabitants of Crailing
were very proud of that thirteenth century window when it was
disinterred; they had a proprietary feeling about it--since, after all,
it had really belonged to them for a little matter of seven centuries
or so, although they had been unaware of the fact.

Below the slope of the Rectory grounds the thatched roofs of the
village bobbed into view, some gleaming golden in all the pride of
recent thatching, others with their crown of straw mellowed by sun and
rain to a deeper colour and patched with clumps of moss, vividly green
as an emerald.

The village itself straggled down to the edge of the sea in untidy
fashion, its cob-walled cottages in some places huddling together as
though for company, in others standing far apart, with spaces of waste
land between them where you might often see the women sitting mending
the fishing nets and gossiping together as they worked.

Diana's eyes wandered affectionately over the picturesque little
houses; she loved every quaint, thatched roof among them, but more than
all she loved the glimpse of the sea that lay beyond them, pierced by
the bold headland of red sandstone, Culver Point, which thrust itself
into the blue of the water like an arm stretched out to shelter the
little village nestling in its curve from the storms of the Atlantic.

Presently she heard the distant click of a gate, and very soon the
Rector and Joan appeared, Stair with the dreaming, far-away expression
in his eyes of one who has been communing with the saints.

Diana went to meet them and slipped her arm confidingly through his.

"Come back to earth, Pobs, dear," she coaxed gaily. "You look like
Moses might have done when he descended fro