e felt seemed to pervade, as it
were, the very silence. With startling abruptness, the silence was
broken by the tones of the great organ that rolled and reverberated among
the arches; distant voices took up the processional; the white choir
filed past,--first the treble voices of the boys, then the deeper notes
of the--men,--turned and mounted the chancel steps, and then she saw
Hodder. Her pew being among the first, he passed very near her. Did he
know she would be there? The sternness of his profile told her nothing.
He seemed at that moment removed, set apart, consecrated--this was the
word that came to her, and yet she was keenly conscious of his presence.

Tingling, she found herself repeating, inwardly, two, lines of the hymn

"Lay hold on life, and it shall be
Thy joy and crown eternally."

"Lay hold on life!"

The service began,--the well-remembered, beautiful appeal and prayers
which she could still repeat, after a lapse of time, almost by heart; and
their music and rhythm, the simple yet magnificent language in which.
they were clothed--her own language--awoke this morning a racial instinct
strong in her,--she had not known how strong. Or was it something in
Hodder's voice that seemed to illumine the ancient words with a new
meaning? Raising her eyes to the chancel she studied his head, and found
in it still another expression of that race, the history of which had
been one of protest, of development of its own character and personality.
Her mind went back to her first talk with him, in the garden, and she saw
how her intuition had recognized in him then the spirit of a people
striving to assert itself.

She stood with tightened lips, during the Apostles' Creed, listening to
his voice as it rose, strong and unfaltering, above the murmur of the
congregation.

At last she saw him swiftly crossing the chancel, mounting the pulpit
steps, and he towered above her, a dominant figure, his white surplice
sharply outlined against the dark stone of the pillar. The hymn died
away, the congregation sat down. There was a sound in the church,
expectant, presaging, like the stirring of leaves at the first breath of
wind, and then all was silent.

II

He had preached for an hour--longer, perhaps. Alison could not have said
how long. She had lost all sense of time.

No sooner had the text been spoken, "Except a man be born again, he
cannot see the Kingdom of God," than she seemed to catch a