Fullarton surveyed a crowded congregation, serenely complacent and
hopeful, as a farmer in August looking down from the hill-side on golden
billows of waving grain. Visitors had been pouring in rather fast during
the week; and there was a vague, general impression, which no individual
would have owned, that they were to hear something unusually good. For
once expectation was not to be disappointed--a remarkable fact, when one
considers how much dissatisfaction is created, as a rule, in the popular
mind, by the shortcomings of eclipses, processions, Vesuvian eruptions,
new operas, and other advertised attractions, natural and artificial.
The singing was really a success. Miss Tresilyan's magnificent voice did
its duty nobly, and did no more. Without overpowering or singling itself
out from the others, it lured them on to follow where they could never
have gone alone: the choir was kept in perfect order without even
knowing that it was disciplined.

There was an elderly Englishman who had resided at Dorade ever since he
had a slight difference of opinion with the Bankruptcy Court a quarter
of a century back. Drifting helplessly and aimlessly about Europe in
search of employment, he had taken root where he came ashore, and
vegetated, as floating weeds will do. He picked up rather a precarious
livelihood by acting as a species of factotum to his countrymen in the
season, ministering, not injudiciously, to their myriad whims and
necessities. Among his multifarious functions, perhaps the most
respectable and permanent was that of clerk to the English chapel. He
was by no means a very religious man, nor were his morals quite
unexceptionable, but he had completely identified himself with the
fortunes and interests of that modest building. A sneer at its
capabilities or a doubt as to its prospects would exasperate him at any
time far more than a direct insult to himself (to be sure there was
little self-respect left to be offended). When disguised in drink, which
was the case tolerably often, he generally proposed to settle the
question by the ordeal of battle, and was only to be appeased by an
apology or a great deal more liquor.

On this occasion the success and the singing combined--for excess and
hardship had not quite deadened a good ear for music--moved the old
castaway strangely. His thoughts wandered back to the misused days when
he had friends, and a position, and character; when he was a householder
and vestryman, and