hristmas fell that year on a Sunday, and dancing should, by rights,
have ceased at midnight. The building stands high above a bleak
peninsula on the South Coast, and the congregation had struggled up with
heads slanted sou'-west against the weather that drove up the Channel in
a black fog. Now, having gained shelter, they quickly lost the glow of
endeavour, and mixed in pleasing stupor the humming of the storm in the
tower above, its intermittent onslaughts on the leadwork of the southern
windows, and the voice of Parson Babbage lifted now and again from the
chancel as if to correct the shambling pace of the choir in the west
gallery.

"Mark me," whispered Old Zeb Minards, crowder and leader of the
musicians, sitting back at the end of the Psalms, and eyeing his fiddle
dubiously; "If Sternhold be sober this morning, Hopkins be drunk as a
fly, or 'tis t'other way round."

"'Twas middlin' wambly," assented Calvin Oke, the second fiddle--a
screw-faced man tightly wound about the throat with a yellow kerchief.

"An' 'tis a delicate matter to cuss the singers when the musicianers be
twice as bad."

"I'd a very present sense of being a bar or more behind the fair--that I
can honestly vow," put in Elias Sweetland, bending across from the left.
Now Elias was a bachelor, and had blown the serpent from his youth up.
He was a bald, thin man, with a high leathern stock, and shoulders that
sloped remarkably.

"Well, 'taint a suent engine at the best, Elias--that o' yourn," said
his affable leader, "nor to be lightly trusted among the proper psa'ms,
'specially since Chris'mas three year, when we sat in the forefront of
the gallery, an' you dropped all but the mouthpiece overboard on to Aunt
Belovely's bonnet at 'I was glad when they said unto me.'"

"Aye, poor soul. It shook her. Never the same woman from that hour, I
do b'lieve. Though I'd as lief you didn't mention it, friends, if I may
say so; for 'twas a bitter portion."

Elias patted his instrument sadly, and the three men looked up for a
moment, as a scud of rain splashed on the window, drowning a sentence of
the First Lesson.

"Well, well," resumed Old Zeb, "we all have our random intervals, and a
drop o' cider in the mouthpieces is no less than Pa'son looks for,
Chris'mas mornin's."

"Trew, trew as proverbs."

"Howsever, 'twas cruel bad, that last psa'm, I won't gainsay. As for
that long-legged boy o' mine, I keep silence, yea, even from hard words,
conside