couple. "Truly," he wound up, "such marriages as theirs were made in
Heaven." And could they have heard, the two bodies in the cemetery had
not denied it; but the woman, after the fashion of women, would have
qualified the young minister's assertion in her secret heart.

When, at the close of the year 1839, the Rev. Samuel Bax visited Troy
for the first time, to preach his trial sermon at Salem Chapel, he
arrived by Boutigo's van, late on a Saturday night, and departed again
for Plymouth at seven o'clock on Monday morning. He had just turned
twenty-one, and looked younger, and the zeal of his calling was strong
upon him. Moreover he was shaken with nervous anxiety for the success
of his sermon; so that it is no marvel if he carried away but blurred
and misty impressions of the little port and the congregation that sat
beneath him that morning, ostensibly reverent, but actually on the
pounce for heresy or any sign of weakness. Their impressions, at any
rate, were sharp enough. They counted his thumps upon the desk, noted
his one reference to "the original Greek," saw and remembered the flush
on his young face and the glow in his eyes as he hammered the doctrine
of the redemption out of original sin. The deacons fixed the subject of
these trial sermons, and had chosen original sin on the ground that a
good beginning was half the battle. The maids in the congregation knew
beforehand that he was unmarried, and came out of chapel knowing also
that his eyes were brown, that his hair had a reddish tinge in certain
lights; that one of his cuffs was frayed slightly, but his black coat
had scarcely been worn a dozen times; with other trifles. They loitered
by the chapel door until he came out in company with Deacon Snowden, who
was conveying him off to dinner. The deacon on week days was
harbour-master of the port, and on Sundays afforded himself roasted duck
for dinner. Lizzie Snowden walked at her father's right hand. She was
a slightly bloodless blonde, tall, with a pretty complexion, and hair
upon which it was rumoured she could sit if she were so minded.
The girls watched the young preacher and his entertainers as they moved
down the hill, the deacon talking and his daughter turning her head
aside as if it were merely in the half of the world on her right hand
that she took the least interest.

"That's to show 'en the big plait," commented one of the group behind.
"He can't turn his head t'wards her, but it st