On the summit of the hill in front of him was the chapel, its sagging roof silhouetted against the blue of the morning sky, the tombstones, irregular and rude, rising from the billowy sea of grave-mounds that lay around their base.  Beyond him, in grandly distant sweeps, rose the moors.  How well he knew all their contours, their histories, their names!  How familiar he used to be with all their moods—­moods sombre and gladsome—­as now they were capped with mist, now radiant in sunlight, their sweeps dappled with cloud shadows, moving or motionless, or white in the broad eye of day.  Thus it was, within the distance of a half-mile walk, his past life, like an open scroll, lay before him; and he remarked to Mr. Penrose that he had that morning found the book of memory to be a book of life and a book of judgment also.

As the three men passed through the chapel-gates they were met by old Joseph, who was hearty in his welcome of Mr. Morell.

‘Eh!  Mr. Morell,’ he said, grasping his hand in a hard and earthy palm, ‘aw’m some fain to see yo’.  We’ve hed no gradely preachin’ sin yo’ left Rehoboth.  This lad here,’ pointing to Mr. Penrose, ‘giz us a twothree crumbs betimes; but some on us, I con tell yo’, are fair clamming for th’ bread o’ life.  None o’ yo’r hawve-kneyded duf (dough), nor your hawve-baked cakes, wi’ a pinch o’ currants to fotch th’ fancy tooth o’ th’ young uns.  Nowe, but gradely bread, yo’ know.’

Mr. Morell tried to check the brutal volubility and plain-spokenness of Joseph, but in vain.  He continued the more vehemently.

‘It’s all luv naa, and no law.  What mak’ o’ a gospel dun yo’ co it when there’s no law, no thunerins (thunderings), Mr. Morell, no leetnins?  What’s th’ use o’ a gospel wi’out law?  No more use nor a chip i’ porritch.  Dun yo’ remember that sarmon yo’ once preached fro’ “Jacob have I luved, but Esau have I hated”?  It wur a grand un, and Owd Harry o’ th’ Brig went straight aat o’ th’ chapel to th’ George and Dragon and geet drunk, ’cose, as he said, he mud as well ged drunk if he wor baan to be damned, as be damned for naught.  Amos Entwistle talks abaat that sarmon naa, and tells bits on it o’er to th’ childer i’ th’ catechism class, and then maks ‘em ged it off by heart.’

How long old Joseph would have continued in this strain it is hard to say, had not Mr. Morell, who did not seem to care to hear more of his pulpit deliverance of other days, silenced him by demanding the vestry keys.

As the three men entered the vestry a close, damp atmosphere smote them—­an atmosphere pervading all rooms long shut up from air, and with foundations fed by fattened graves.

Nor was the vestry itself more inviting.  Gloomy and low-ceiled, the plaster of its walls, soddened and discoloured from the moisture of the moors, lay peeling off in ragged strips, while its oozing floor of flags seemed to tell of sweating corpses in their narrow beds beneath.