r-bell, and
was rung three times a day, at eight, and twelve, and four, so that the
scattered inhabitants of the lonely country-side, the sower in the
field, the housewife among her pots, the fisherman on the Bodden, or
over there, in quiet weather, on the sea, might hear it and join
together spiritually at those hours in a common prayer. 'And do they?' I
asked. He shrugged his shoulders and murmured of hopes.

It is the quaintest church. The vaulted chancel is the oldest part, and
there is an altarpiece put there by the Swedish Field-Marshal Wrangel,
who in the seventeenth century lived in a turreted Schloss near by that
I had seen from the hills. A closed-in seat high up on the side of the
chancel was where he sat; it has latticed windows and curiously-painted
panels, with his arms in the middle panel and those of Prince Putbus, to
whom the Schloss now belongs, on either side. The parson took me up into
the gallery and showed me a picture of John the Baptist's head, just
off, with Herodias trying to pull out its tongue. I said I thought it
nasty, and he told me it had been moved up there because the lady
downstairs over whose head it used to hang was made ill by it every
Sunday. Had the parishioners up in the gallery thicker skins, I asked?
But there was no question of skins, because the congregation never
overflowed into the galleries. There is another picture up there, the
Supper at Emmaus, with the Scripture account written underneath in
Latin. The parson read this aloud, and his eyes, otherwise so mild, woke
into gleams of enthusiasm. It sounded very dignified and compressed to
ears accustomed to Luther's lengthy rendering of the same thing. I
remarked how beautiful it was, and with a pleased smile he at once read
it again, and then translated it into Greek, lingering lovingly over
each of the beautiful words. I sat listening in the cool of the dusty
little gallery, gazing out at the summer fields and the glistening water
of the Bodden through the open door. His gentle voice made a soft
droning in the emptiness. A swallow came in and skimmed about anxiously,
trying to get out again.

'The painted pulpit was also given by Wrangel,' said the parson, as we
went downstairs.

'He seems to have given a great deal.'

'He needed to, to make good all his sins,' he replied with a smile.
'Many were the sins he committed.'

I smiled too. Posterity in the shape of the parishioners of Bobbin have
been direct gainers by Wr