d Greta, picking up the
foremost of the company, the tiny man in the epaulets, now covered with
the dust of the roads.

"The little ones first, and you great girls afterward," said the parson.
"Those with flowers go up to the communion and lay them on the form, and
those with mosses put them on the font, and those with rushes and ferns
begin under the pulpit and come down the aisle to the porch."

The stalwart little tramp in Greta's arms wriggled his way to the
ground. He had mosses in his hands and must go first. Then the children
trooped into the church, and in an instant the rude old place was alive
with the buzz of prattling tongues.

The floor covered many a tomb. Graven on the plain slabs that formed the
pathway down the middle of the church were the names of the men and
women who had lived and died in the dale generations gone by. In their
own day they were children themselves; and now other children--their own
children's children's children--with never a thought about what lay
beneath, with only love in their eyes, and laughter on their lips, and
life in their limbs--were strewing rushes down the path above them.

In ten minutes there was not an inch of the flagged aisle visible. All
was green from the communion to the porch. Here and there an adventurous
lad, turning to account the skill at climbing acquired at
birds'-nesting, had clambered over the pews to the rude cross-trees, and
hung great bunches of rushes from the roof.

"Now, children, let us sing," said the parson, and taking up the
accordion, he started a hymn.

The leaded windows of the old church stood open, and the sweet young
voices floated away, and far away, over the uplands and the dale. And
the birds still sung in the blue sky, and the ghylls still rumbled in
the distance, and the light wind still souched through the long grass,
and the morning sunlight shone over all.

There was a cloud of dust on the road, and presently there came trooping
down from the village a company of men, surrounded by a whole circuit of
dogs. Snarls, and yaps, and yelps, and squawks, and guffaws, and
sometimes the cachinnation and crow of cocks, broke upon the clear air.
The roystering set would be as many as a dozen, and all were more or
less drunk. First came John Proudfoot, the blacksmith, in his
shirt-sleeves, with his leathern apron wrapped in a knot about his
waist, and a silver and black game-cock imprisoned under his arm. Lang
Geordie Moore, his young