That wished-for day seemed long a-coming, as wished-for days most frequently do.  Her father got better by slow degrees, and her mother was pleased by the tailor’s good pieces of work; showing the neatly-placed patches with as much pride as many matrons take in new clothes now-a-days.  And the weather cleared up into a dim kind of autumnal fineness, into anything but an Indian summer as far as regarded gorgeousness of colouring, for on that coast the mists and sea fogs early spoil the brilliancy of the foliage.  Yet, perhaps, the more did the silvery grays and browns of the inland scenery conduce to the tranquillity of the time,—­the time of peace and rest before the fierce and stormy winter comes on.  It seems a time for gathering up human forces to encounter the coming severity, as well as of storing up the produce of harvest for the needs of winter.  Old people turn out and sun themselves in that calm St. Martin’s summer, without fear of ‘the heat o’ th’ sun, or the coming winter’s rages,’ and we may read in their pensive, dreamy eyes that they are weaning themselves away from the earth, which probably many may never see dressed in her summer glory again.

Many such old people set out betimes, on the Sunday afternoon to which Sylvia had been so looking forward, to scale the long flights of stone steps—­worn by the feet of many generations—­which led up to the parish church, placed on a height above the town, on a great green area at the summit of the cliff, which was the angle where the river and the sea met, and so overlooking both the busy crowded little town, the port, the shipping, and the bar on the one hand, and the wide illimitable tranquil sea on the other—­types of life and eternity.  It was a good situation for that church.  Homeward-bound sailors caught sight of the tower of St Nicholas, the first land object of all.  They who went forth upon the great deep might carry solemn thoughts with them of the words they had heard there; not conscious thoughts, perhaps—­rather a distinct if dim conviction that buying and selling, eating and marrying, even life and death, were not all the realities in existence.  Nor were the words that came up to their remembrance words of sermons preached there, however impressive.  The sailors mostly slept through the sermons; unless, indeed, there were incidents such as were involved in what were called ‘funeral discourses’ to be narrated.  They did not recognize their daily faults or temptations under the grand aliases befitting their appearance from a preacher’s mouth.  But they knew the old, oft-repeated words praying for deliverance from the familiar dangers of lightning and tempest; from battle, murder, and sudden death; and nearly every man was aware that he left behind him some one who would watch for the prayer for the preservation of those who travel by land or by water, and think of him, as God-protected the more for the earnestness of the response then given.