“We can make believe to do it,” Taffy suggested.

Honoria considered for a moment.  “I’ll tell you what:  there’s a great Bryanite meeting to-night, down at the Chapel.  I expect there’ll be a devil hunt.”

“What’s that?”

“They turn out the lights and hunt for him in the dark.”

“But he isn’t really there?”

“I don’t know.  Suppose we play at scouts and creep down the road?  If the Chapel is lit up we can spy in on them; and then you can squeeze your nose on the glass and make a face, while I say ‘Boo!’ and they’ll think the Old Gentleman is really come.”

They stole down the ladder and out of the town-place.  The Chapel stood three-quarters of a mile away, on a turfed wastrel where two high roads met and crossed.

Long before they reached it they heard clamorous voices and groans.

“I expect the devil hunt has begun,” said Honoria.  But when they came in sight of the building its windows were brightly lit.  The noise inside was terrific.

The two children approached it with all the precaution proper to scouts.  Suddenly the clamour ceased and the evening fell so silent that Taffy heard the note of an owl away in the Tredinnis plantations to his left.  This silence was daunting, but they crept on and soon were standing in the illuminated ring of furze whins which surrounded the Chapel.

“Can you reach up to look in?”

Taffy could not; so Honoria obligingly went on hands and knees, and he stood on her back.

“Can you see?  What’s the matter?”

Taffy gasped. “He’s in there!”

“What?—­the Old Gentleman?”

“Yes; no—­your grandfather!”

“What?  Let me get up.  Here, you kneel—­”

It was true.  Under the rays of a paraffin lamp, in face of the kneeling congregation, sat Squire Moyle; his body stiffly upright on the bench, his jaws rigid, his eyes with horror in them fastened upon the very window through which Honoria peered—­fastened, it seemed to her, upon her face.  But, no; he saw nothing.  The Bryanites were praying; Honoria saw their lips moving.  Their eyes were all on the old man’s face.  In the straining silence his mouth opened—­but only for a moment—­while his tongue wetted his parched lips.

A man by the pulpit-stairs shuffled his feet.  A sigh passed through the Chapel as he rose and relaxed the tension.  It was Jacky Pascoe.  He stepped up to the Squire, and, laying a hand on his shoulder, said, gently, persuasively, yet so clearly that Honoria could hear every word: 

“Try, brother.  Keep on trying.  O, I’ve knowed cases—­You can never tell how near salvation is.  One minute the heart’s like a stone, and the next maybe ’tis melted and singing like fat in a pan.  ’Tis working! ’tis working!”

The congregation broke out with cries:  “Amen!” “Glory, glory!” The Squire’s lips moved and he muttered something.  But stony despair sat in his eyes.