matter worse, the church door had
reopened, and the aisles were filling: patter, patter, patter, a hundred
little feet trotted in. It was the Sunday scholars. According to
Briarfield winter custom, these children had till now been kept where
there was a warm stove, and only led into church just before the
communion and sermon.

The little ones were settled first, and at last, when the boys and the
younger girls were all arranged--when the organ was swelling high, and
the choir and congregation were rising to uplift a spiritual song--a
tall class of young women came quietly in, closing the procession. Their
teacher, having seen them seated, passed into the rectory pew. The
French-gray cloak and small beaver bonnet were known to Martin; it was
the very costume his eyes had ached to catch. Miss Helstone had not
suffered the storm to prove an impediment. After all, she was come to
church. Martin probably whispered his satisfaction to his hymn book; at
any rate, he therewith hid his face two minutes.

Satisfied or not, he had time to get very angry with her again before
the sermon was over. She had never once looked his way; at least he had
not been so lucky as to encounter a glance.

"If," he said--"if she takes no notice of me, if she shows I am not in
her thoughts, I shall have a worse, a meaner opinion of her than ever.
Most despicable would it be to come for the sake of those sheep-faced
Sunday scholars, and not for my sake or that long skeleton Moore's."

The sermon found an end; the benediction was pronounced; the
congregation dispersed. She had not been near him.

Now, indeed, as Martin set his face homeward, he felt that the sleet was
sharp and the east wind cold.

His nearest way lay through some fields. It was a dangerous, because an
untrodden way. He did not care; he would take it. Near the second stile
rose a clump of trees. Was that an umbrella waiting there? Yes, an
umbrella, held with evident difficulty against the blast; behind it
fluttered a French-gray cloak. Martin grinned as he toiled up the steep,
encumbered field, difficult to the foot as a slope in the upper realms
of Etna. There was an inimitable look in his face when, having gained
the stile, he seated himself coolly thereupon, and thus opened a
conference which, for his own part, he was willing to prolong
indefinitely.

"I think you had better strike a bargain. Exchange me for Mrs. Pryor."

"I was not sure whether you would come this way,