all the stops—­the vicar passed from the prayer-desk to the pulpit with the rapt look of a man who walks in a prophetic dream—­we pulled ourselves together, Master Isaac brought the hymn book close to his glasses, and when the tantalizing prelude was past we burst forth with a volume which merged all discrepancies.  As far as I am able to judge of my own performance, I fear I bawled (I’m sure the boy behind me did),

     “Father of Heaven, in Whom our hopes confide,
      Whose power defends us, and Whose precepts guide,
      In life our Guardian, and in death our Friend,
      Glory supreme be Thine till time shall end!”

The sermon was short, and when the service was over Master Isaac and I spent a delightful afternoon with his bees among the heather.  The “evening star” had come out when we had some tea in the village inn, and we walked home by moonlight.  There was neither wind nor sun, but the air was almost oppressively pure.  The moonshine had taken the colour out of the sandy road and the heather, and had painted black shadows by every boulder, and most things looked asleep except the rill that went on running.  Only we and the rabbits, and the night moths and the beetles, seemed to be stirring.  An occasional bat appeared and vanished like a spectral illusion, and I saw one owl flap across the moor with level wings against the moon.

“Oh, I have enjoyed it!” was all I could say when I parted from the bee-master.

“And so have I, Master Jack,” was his reply, and he hesitated as if he had something more to say, and then he said it.  “I never enjoyed it as much, and you can thank your mother, sir, with old Isaac’s duty, for sending us to church.  I’m sure I don’t know why I never went before when I was up yonder, for I always took notice of the bells.  I reckon I thought I hadn’t time, but you can say, with my respects, sir, that please GOD I shan’t miss again.”

I believe he never did; and Cripple Charlie’s father came to look on him as half a parishioner.

I was glad I had not shirked Evening Prayer myself, though (my sex and age considered) it was not to be expected that I should comfort my mother’s heart by confessing as much.  Let me confess it now, and confess also that if it was the first time, it was not the last that I have had cause to realize—­oh women, for our sakes remember it!—­into what light and gentle hands GOD lays the reins that guide men’s better selves.

* * * * *

The most remarkable event of the day happened at the end of it.  Whilst Isaac was feeling the weight of one of his hives, and just after I lost chase of a very peculiar-looking beetle, from his squeezing himself away from me under a boulder, I had caught sight of a bit of white heather, and then bethought me of gathering a nosegay (to include this rarity) of moor flowers and grasses for Mrs. Wood.  So when we reached the lane on our way home, I bade Isaac good-night, and said I would just run in by the back way into the farm (we never called it the Academy) and leave the flowers, that the school-mistress might put them in water.  Mary Anne was in the kitchen.