u have I hated"? It wur a grand
un, and Owd Harry o' th' Brig went straight aat o' th' chapel to
th' George and Dragon and geet drunk, 'cose, as he said, he mud as
well ged drunk if he wor baan to be damned, as be damned for
naught. Amos Entwistle talks abaat that sarmon naa, and tells bits
on it o'er to th' childer i' th' catechism class, and then maks
'em ged it off by heart.'

How long old Joseph would have continued in this strain it is hard
to say, had not Mr. Morell, who did not seem to care to hear more
of his pulpit deliverance of other days, silenced him by demanding
the vestry keys.

As the three men entered the vestry a close, damp atmosphere smote
them--an atmosphere pervading all rooms long shut up from air, and
with foundations fed by fattened graves.

Nor was the vestry itself more inviting. Gloomy and low-ceiled,
the plaster of its walls, soddened and discoloured from the
moisture of the moors, lay peeling off in ragged strips, while its
oozing floor of flags seemed to tell of sweating corpses in their
narrow beds beneath.

Through a small window, across which a spider had woven its web, a
shaft of sunlight lay tremulous with the dance of multitudinous
motes; and, falling on the dust-covered table, lighted up with its
halo a corroded pen and stained stone jar, half filled with
congealed ink.

On the right of this window stood a cupboard, with its panels of
dark oak, behind which lay the parchments and papers of the
Rehoboth Church--parchments and papers whose inscriptions were
fast fading, whose textures were fast rotting--companioning in
their decay the decay of the creeds they sought to preserve and
proclaim.

It was to this cupboard Mr. Morell turned, taking therefrom two
time-stained, leather-bound volumes--the one a record of the
interments of the past hundred years, the other containing the roll
of Rehoboth communicants since the establishment of the Church.
Laying the former aside, he took up the latter with a tenderness
and devoutness becoming one who was touching the sacred books of
some fetish of the East. It was, indeed, to him a book to be
reverenced; and as he slowly and sadly turned over its time-stained
pages, his eye rested on many names entered in his own small
handwriting--names which carried him back to companionship with
lives for ever past. Some he had known from birth to death,
blessing them in their advent, and committing them at the grave to
Him who is the sure and cert