Tommy rose heavily up, shook the fragments of dry grass from his patched garments, and signified that he was ready.  Musgrave took his arm, and at once assumed an attitude of companionship and equality.  He talked with this churl about all manner of trivialities, flattered him, appealed to his sense of shrewdness, made little jokes suitable to his wit, and finally succeeded in making him feel himself to be rather a clever and entertaining person.  The afternoon sun sloped lower and lower as the two strolled over the moor.  Musgrave’s thoughts were high, although his words ran upon childish things.  He had no particular artistic sense, but the joy of colour, the blaze of the sky, the warm and exhilarating air, made him feel as though he must utter praises.  After passing some miles of strange moorland, covered with the blaze of gorse, and the multitudinous flash of marshy pools, the two arrived at a curious square building, which stood a little outside the fishing village.

Musgrave said, “Now, Thomas, come in, and I’ll find you a pew,” and the two entered a low room.  The congregation was already collected.  There were fierce faces, bronzed by wind and sun.  There were quiet faces that bore the marks of thought and the memories of toil.  The men were all rudely dressed, and the women wore the primitive clothing which for three hundred years past has served for the simple tastes of the villagers.  After a pause of a few minutes, Walter Musgrave’s tall figure loomed in the shadowy corner where the pulpit stood.  A simple hymn was dictated and sung in strong nasal tones.  The old man who led the singing prided himself upon the volume of sound which he could at any instant propel through his nose.  Strangers were sometimes a little disconcerted by this feat, for it seemed as if some wholly new description of trumpet had been suddenly invented.  This man of the trumpet voice was wont to close his eyes and turn his face towards the ceiling.  When once the preliminary blast had been blown from his nostrils, no power on earth could stay the flood of song.  He became oblivious of time and space and the congregation.  Considerations as to harmony did not enter into his scheme of the universe.  If he got flagrantly wrong, he simply coughed and took up the thread of the musical narrative where he left off.  The congregation had a great notion of his powers.  They considered that the terrific drone with which he opened a hymn could not be equalled in any church or in any chapel for twenty miles round.

Musgrave suffered a good deal under the storm of harmony, but he always bore it bravely, and, when possible, lent the aid of his own high, sweet tenor, to the nasal clamour.  After the hymn came a short prayer, delivered as though the speaker really believed that his God was at hand, and would instantly listen to any petition humbly proffered by frail creatures.  At the end of a short pause, Walter Musgrave stood up to speak.  He broadened his chest and straightened