, as she
approached it now! Here were the people, still, in the midst of whom her
earliest associations had been formed, changed, indeed,-but yet the same.
No, the change was in her, and the very vastness of that change came as a
shock. These had stood still, anchored to their traditions, while she
--had she grown? or merely wandered? She had searched, at least, and seen.
She had once accepted them--if indeed as a child it could have been said
of her that she accepted anything; she had been unable then, at any rate,
to bring forward any comparisons.

Now she beheld them, collectively, in their complacent finery, as
representing a force, a section of the army blocking the heads of the
passes of the world's progress, resting on their arms, but ready at the
least uneasy movement from below to man the breastworks, to fling down
the traitor from above, to fight fiercely for the solidarity of their
order. And Alison even believed herself to detect, by something
indefinable in their attitudes as they stood momentarily conversing
in lowered voices, an aroused suspicion, an uneasy anticipation. Her
imagination went so far as to apprehend, as they greeted her unwonted
appearance, that they read in it an addition to other vague and
disturbing phenomena. Her colour was high.

"Why, my dear," said Mrs. Atterbury, "I thought you had gone back to New
York long ago!"

Beside his mother stood Gordon--more dried up, it seemed, than ever.
Alison recalled him, as on this very spot, a thin, pale boy in short
trousers, and Mrs. Atterbury a beautiful and controlled young matron
associated with St. John's and with children's parties. She was
wonderful yet, with her white hair and straight nose, her erect figure
still slight. Alison knew that Mrs. Atterbury had never forgiven her for
rejecting her son--or rather for being the kind of woman who could reject
him.

"Surely you haven't been here all summer?"

Alison admitted it, characteristically, without explanations.

"It seems so natural to see you here at the old church, after all these
years," the lady went on, and Alison was aware that Mrs. Atterbury
questioned--or rather was at a loss for the motives which had led such an
apostate back to the fold. "We must thank Mr. Hodder, I suppose. He's
very remarkable. I hear he is resuming the services to-day for the first
time since June."

Alison was inclined to read a significance into Mrs. Atterbury's glance
at her son, who was clearing h