e with it; and it was very old. The damp haze had entered the
building, and obscuring half the clearstory it enhanced its stateliness,
for the great carved pillars and arches led the wandering eye aloft and
lost it in a mystery, while far up at the western end above the organ a
gilded Gloria caught a stray shaft of light and blazed out of the gloom.
I saw Grace's eyes rest on it, and then I followed them down across the
sea of faces, along the quaint escutcheons, and over two marble tombs,
until she fixed them on her father, who with his party sat in a
high-backed pew. The crash of music outside ceased, and with a steady
tramp of feet, file by file, men in scarlet uniform moved up the aisle;
while before them, led by the sword and gilded mace, came a little homely
man, who seemed burdened by his glittering chain, and most uncomfortable.
As I knew, he commenced his business career with ten pounds' capital, and
could hardly speak plain English, while now his goods were known in every
bazaar from Cairo to Singapore. This knowledge fostered a vague but daring
hope within me.

I remember little of the service beyond Grace's voice ringing high and
clear in the "Magnificat," while for perhaps the first time I caught a
glimmer of its full significance, and her face, clean-cut against the
shadow where a fretted pinnacle allowed one shaft of light to pass it,
looking, I thought, like that of a haloed saint. The rest was all a
blurred impression of rolling music, half-seen faces, and gay uniforms,
until a tall old man of commanding personality stood high aloft in the
carved pulpit, and proclaimed a doctrine that seemed strangely out of
place in the busy town. Honest labor brought its own reward in the joy of
diligent toil, he said, and the prize of fame or money was a much slighter
thing. I could not quite understand this then, for there were many in that
district whose daily toil wore body and soul away, so that none of them
might hope to live out half of man's allotted span, while a prize for
which I would have given my life sat close beside me, and twice that
evening the calm proud eyes had smiled gratefully into mine.

Still, there was one drawback. As chance would have it, Minnie Lee, who
operated the typewriter in the mill offices, sat just opposite, and would
cast mischievous glances toward me. We were good friends in a way, for
during two years I had talked to her on business matters every day, and
sometimes also indulged