Some hours later he raised his eyes from the floor which he had been studying for a great while, covered them for a moment with his hand, then rose, and, with the air of a sleepwalker, went out of the lit room into a calm and fragrant night.  There was no moon, but the stars were many, and it did not seem dark.  When he came to the verge of the landing, and the river, sighing in its sleep, lay clear below him, mirroring the stars, it was as though he stood between two firmaments.  He descended the steps, and drew toward him a small rowboat that was softly rubbing against the wet and glistening piles.  The tide was out, and the night was very quiet.

Haward troubled not the midstream, but rowing in the shadow of the bank to the mouth of the creek that slept beside his garden, turned and went up this narrow water.  Until he was free of the wall the odor of honeysuckle and box clung to the air, freighting it heavily; when it was left behind the reeds began to murmur and sigh, though not loudly, for there was no wind.  When he came to a point opposite the minister’s house, rising fifty yards away from amidst low orchard trees, he rested upon his oars.  There was a light in an upper room, and as he looked Audrey passed between the candle and the open window.  A moment later and the light was out, but he knew that she was sitting at the window.  Though it was dark, he found that he could call back with precision the slender throat, the lifted face, and the enshadowing hair.  For a while he stayed, motionless in his boat, hidden by the reeds that whispered and sighed; but at last he rowed away softly through the darkness, back to the dim, slow-moving river and the Fair View landing.

This was of a Friday.  All the next day he spent in the garden, but on Sunday morning he sent word to the stables to have Mirza saddled.  He was going to church, he told Juba over his chocolate, and he would wear the gray and silver.

CHAPTER XIII

A SABBATH DAY’S JOURNEY

Although the house of worship which boasted as its ornament the Reverend Gideon Darden was not so large and handsome as Bruton church, nor could rival the painted glories of Poplar Spring, it was yet a building good enough,—­of brick, with a fair white spire and a decorous mantle of ivy.  The churchyard, too, was pleasant, though somewhat crowded with the dead.  There were oaks for shade, and wild roses for fragrance, and the grass between the long gravestones, prone upon mortal dust, grew very thick and green.  Outside the gates,—­a gift from the first master of Fair View,—­between the churchyard and the dusty highroad ran a long strip of trampled turf, shaded by locust-trees and by one gigantic gum that became in the autumn a pillar of fire.