On this Sunday morning of weather portents it chanced to be Ardea’s turn to entertain the young minister, or rather to give him his breakfast after the service; and she waited for him in the vestibule after the others had gone.  The outer doors were open, and she could see the gray cloud mass feathering on its under side and creeping lower on the slopes of Lebanon in every stormy gust of the chill wind.

“It was prudent to bring your overcoat this morning, Mr. Morelock,” she said, when her guest emerged from the vesting-room with his cassock in a neat bundle under his arm.  “If I’d had any idea it would turn cold so fast, I should have had the carriage come for us.”

“Indeed, my dear Miss Dabney, if you could walk to church, I’m sure I can walk home with you,” was the ready response; nevertheless, the rather fragile-looking young man shuddered a little in sympathy with the rawness of the wind.  He was from well-sheltered New England, and he had not yet acquired the native Southron’s indifference to weather discomforts; would never acquire them this side of a consumptive’s grave, it was to be feared.

“The attendance was pretty good for such a disagreeable morning, don’t you think?” Ardea ventured, trying to make talk as they breasted the gusts together on the Deer Trace side of the pike.

The young missioner shook his head rather despondently.  “There are English churchmen among the English and Welsh miners at Gordonia,—­quite a number of them,” he rejoined.  “Not one of them was present.”

It was the clear-sighted inner Ardea that smiled.  There was little in the stately service and luxurious appointments of the country colony’s church to attract the working-men, and much to repel them.  She wondered that Mr. Morelock, young as he was, did not understand this.

“The mission of St. John’s is hardly to the working people of Gordonia, is it?” she said, more in exculpation than in criticism.

“Oh, my dear young lady! the church knows no class distinctions!” protested the zealous one warmly.  “Her call is to rich and poor, gentle and simple, young and old alike; and it is imperative.  I must make a round of visitation among these miners at the very first opportunity.”

Ardea bent low to the buffet of a stronger blast and fought for a moment with her clinging skirts.  When she had breath to say it, she said:  “Will you really do that?  Then let me tell you how.  Come out here some week-day in your roughest clothes, and make your round among the men while they are at work in the mine.  They will listen to you then.”

“Bless me! what an idea!” he gasped.

“It is not original with me,” was the gentle reply.  “You will remember that the example was set a good many hundred years ago among the fishermen of Galilee.  And, after all, Mr. Morelock, it is the only way.  You can not reach down to a living soul on this earth—­that is worth saving.”