Near the door was a square headstone marking the grave of Charles
Considine Smith; and she paused beside it to read once more the somewhat
strange inscription.

Under his name and age, cut deep in the moss-grown stone, were the
words: "_Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not
fear._"

Often before Jan had wondered what could have caused Tranquil, his wife,
to choose so strenuous an epitaph. Tranquil, who had never stirred
twenty miles from the place where she was born; whose very name, so far
as they could gather, exemplified her life.

What secret menace had threatened this "staid person," this prosperous
shipper of sherry who, apparently, had spent the evening of his life in
observing the habits of wrens.

Why should his gentle wife have thus commemorated his fighting spirit?

Be the reason what it might, Jan felt vaguely comforted. There was
triumph as well as trust in the words. Whatever it was that had
threatened him, he had stood up to it. His wife knew this and was proud.

Jan tried the heavy oak door and it yielded, and from the soft mildness
of the spring evening, so full of happy sounds of innocent life, she
passed into the grey and sacred silence of the church.

It was cold in the beautiful old fourteenth-century church, with that
pervading smell of badly-burning wood that is so often found in country
churches till all attempt at heating ceases for the summer. But nothing
could mar the nobility of its austerely lovely architecture; the
indefinable, exquisite grace that soothes and penetrates.

She went and knelt in the Wren's End pew where Charles Considine Smith's
vast prayer-book still stood on the book-board. And even as in the
Bombay Cathedral she had prayed that strength might be given to her to
walk in the Way, so now she prayed for courage and a quiet, steadfast
mind.

Her head was bowed and buried in her hands: "_My heart shall not
fear_," she whispered; but she knew that it did fear, and fear
grievously.

The tense silence was broken by an odd, fitful, pattering sound; but
Jan, absorbed in her petition for the courage she could not feel, heard
nothing.

Something clumsy, warm, and panting pushed against her, and she
uncovered her face and looked down upon William trying to thrust his
head under her arm and join in her devotions.

And William became a misty blur, for her eyes filled with tears; he
looked so anxious and foolish and kind with his tongue hanging out