r a full minute
the two stared, then Derek said:

"Look out, then; be ready!" and, getting off the sill, he went out.

On the bright, slimy surface of the pond three ducks were quietly
revelling in that hour before man and his damned soul, the dog, rose
to put the fear of God into them. In the sunlight, against the green
duckweed, their whiteness was truly marvellous; difficult to believe
that they were not white all through. Passing the three cottages, in the
last of which the Gaunts lived, he came next to his own home, but did
not turn in, and made on toward the church. It was a very little one,
very old, and had for him a curious fascination, never confessed to man
or beast. To his mother, and Sheila, more intolerant, as became women,
that little, lichened, gray stone building was the very emblem of
hypocrisy, of a creed preached, not practised; to his father it was
nothing, for it was not alive, and any tramp, dog, bird, or fruit-tree
meant far more. But in Derek it roused a peculiar feeling, such as a man
might have gazing at the shores of a native country, out of which he
had been thrown for no fault of his own--a yearning deeply muffled up in
pride and resentment. Not infrequently he would come and sit brooding
on the grassy hillock just above the churchyard. Church-going, with its
pageantry, its tradition, dogma, and demand for blind devotion, would
have suited him very well, if only blind devotion to his mother had not
stood across that threshold; he could not bring himself to bow to that
which viewed his rebellious mother as lost. And yet the deep fibres
of heredity from her papistic Highland ancestors, and from old pious
Moretons, drew him constantly to this spot at times when no one would
be about. It was his enemy, this little church, the fold of all the
instincts and all the qualities against which he had been brought up
to rebel; the very home of patronage and property and superiority; the
school where his friends the laborers were taught their place! And yet
it had that queer, ironical attraction for him. In some such sort had
his pet hero Montrose rebelled, and then been drawn despite himself once
more to the side of that against which he had taken arms.

While he leaned against the rail, gazing at that ancient edifice, he
saw a girl walk into the churchyard at the far end, sit down on a
gravestone, and begin digging a little hole in the grass with the toe
of her boot. She did not seem to see him, and