and her aunt as she wondered that so dear and quaint a place
of worship should be still left in her iconoclastic native country.
She had seen nothing even in Boston like this, there were so many
antique splendors about the chancel, and many mural tablets on the
walls, where she read with sudden delight her own family name and the
list of virtues which had belonged to some of her ancestors. The dear
old place! there never had been and never could be any church like
it; it seemed to have been waiting all her life for her to come to say
her prayers where so many of her own people had brought their sins and
sorrows in the long years that were gone. She only wished that the
doctor were with her, and the same feeling that used to make her watch
for him in her childhood until he smiled back again filled all her
loving and grateful heart. She knew that he must be thinking of her
that morning; he was not in church himself, he had planned a long
drive to the next town but one, to see a dying man, who seemed to be
helped only by this beloved physician's presence. There had been some
talk between Dr. Leslie and Nan about a medicine which might possibly
be of use, and she found herself thinking about that again and again.
She had reminded the doctor of it and he had seemed very pleased. It
must be longer ago than yesterday since she left Oldfields, it already
counted for half a lifetime.

One listener at least was not resentful because the sermon was neither
wise nor great, for she had so many things to think of; but while she
was sometimes lost in her own thoughts, Nan stole a look at the thinly
filled galleries now and then, and at one time was pleased with the
sight of the red-cheeked cherubs which seemed to have been caught like
clumsy insects and pinned as a sort of tawdry decoration above the
tablets where the Apostle's Creed and the Ten Commandments were
printed in faded gilt letters. The letter s was made long in these
copies and the capitals were of an almost forgotten pattern, and after
Nan had discovered her grandfather's name in the prayer-book she held,
and had tried again to listen to the discourse, she smiled at the
discovery of a familiar face in one of the wall pews. It somehow gave
her a feeling of security as being a link with her past experiences,
and she looked eagerly again and again until this old acquaintance,
who also was a stranger and a guest in Dunport, happened to direct a
careless glance toward her, and