d daughters of the
plough, bearing coarse bedroom jugs of tea and coffee, plates of cakes,
pies, and sandwiches. The people waiting thus in patient content at
the doors were orderly and sober, and none ventured to enter till their
rector, having unearthed even the remotest and shyest member of his
flock, advanced in florid hurry and taking his wife and Ringfield with
him, passed under the hanging branches of maize, asparagus, fern and
crabapples which decorated the great door. The floor of the barn,
although partially cleared, was still half full of straw, and flecks of
it flew through the air as the people trooped in, decently awed but
amused too, for the ripple of lowered laughter and pleased hum of
voices resounded throughout the building. The walls, draped with flags
and coloured curtains, held sheaves of grasses and several lamps in
brackets at the sides, and the food, good, plain, with plenty of it,
adorned the two long tables that ran down the middle. Ringfield, at
the head of a table, was comparing the scene with some Harvest Homes of
his youth, and wondering who would start the Doxology, when he heard
the rector say, standing a long way off at the end of the other table:--

"We have the Rev. Mr. Ringfield of St. Ignace with us this afternoon,
and I have no doubt that he is already as anxious as the rest of you
for a share of the good things we see here before us, so I am going to
ask him to say--ah--Grace, then we can fall to. Mr. Ringfield, will
you be kind enough to ask the blessing?"

There was a pause, not because Ringfield was unready on these occasions
nor because of any fear lest his special kind of intercessory
gastronomic prayer might fail to carry conviction with it, but on
account of the intrusion of two belated arrivals down by the door. He
could not distinguish very clearly, but there seemed to be some one
either invalided or very young in a basket-chair, wheeled in by a young
woman of twenty-two or twenty-three, who entering brusquely, on a run,
and laughing, was silenced, and the chair and its occupant pushed back
against the wall. This slight but untimely interruption over,
Ringfield gazed solemnly around--it was already growing a little dim in
the barn--and spoke as follows, with head thrown back, and closed
eyes:--

"O Lord, the giver of all good things, who sendest seed-time and
harvest, rain and sun on the fruits of the earth and crownest the year
with fatness, look down on us at t