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that connected the two Pastons. In a few minutes he had drawn up at the lych-gate, and was finding his way among the gravestones.

The sudden gasp of a harmonium surprised him⁠—of course, they were at evening service. What was that tune? "Nearer, my God, to Thee," wasn't it? He went up to the porch; it is an almost irresistible temptation to listen when sound comes out from a building into the open. . . . Yes, that was the hymn, most rustically sung by a congregation that sounded chiefly female, but with the one inevitable male voice dominating all, very loud and tuneless. Here in the porch you got a sort of quintessential effect of Sunday evening service in a country church: the smell of oil lamps, a glimpse of ugly deal pews, Sunday clothes, tablets on the wall in memory of dead virtues and hypocrisies. Yes, it was finishing now:

and then the penetrating Amen for which the best efforts of the singers seemed to have been reserved. There was a rustle and a shuffling as the erect forms