cotts, the two Bagnall boys, the Hobday girls, Mr. and Mrs. Pluepott, Carrie, and old Colonel Diamond. Poley was anxious to come, but Mrs. Poley feared for her chest, in spite of Mrs. Pluepott's recklessness over hers, and Poley, even with the help of a third whisky and a great many raisins soaked in brandy, was not brave enough to face domestic opinion when he returned.

Mark had not warned Dorward of the congregation he was bringing, but he did not think that anything would surprise that man of faith whose confidence in the will of God was such that if Mark arrived with a troop of fallen angels to worship at the Crib he would scarcely be disconcerted.

The party set out boisterously, making the treeshadowed road ring with their merriment as the lanterns bobbed up the long climb to Medworth. Mark had thought it more prudent not to lead them by the grassy byways, where the deep ruts would have made Pluepott's task too difficult. But when the merrymakers emerged from the darkness of the trees and walked under the great starry sky along the high ground before Medworth, a silence fell upon them for awhile. They came under the spell of this night, and the procession moved so gently that the wind, never quite still about these uplands, was heard lisping in the withered grass of the rides that bordered the road.

Presently Carrie asked Mark if it would matter should they sing carols. Mark thought that nothing could be more appropriate to their nocturnal purpose; but, unfortunately, nobody knew any carols. However, the women of the party managed to sing a considerable portion of Adeste Fideles, or, perhaps to be more accurate, to sing the first few lines a considerable number of times in the poor English of the version in Hymns Ancient and Modern. Their voices were not good, and they were seldom in tune; but their singing expressed, it would have been difficult to say how, the twinkling of the stars, and it was in perfect harmony, though again it would have been difficult to say how, with the warm winter night.

There were no lights in Medworth village or in Med

worth church as they passed through; and when they reached Green Lanes all was dark and silent there except for a dim glow beyond the last cottage of the hamlet, a glow which, as they drew nearer, took on the luminous outline of the little church with all its windows shedding golden beams from the candlelight within.

They entered on tiptoe as midnight struck from the belfry of Medworth church, each note of which seemed to sail across the silent country like some solemn and invisible bird. The congregation assembled from Green Lanes was not large. There was Cassandra Batt, who was officially sexton, but acted as clerk and sacristan, and if necessary as acolyte, lector, exorcist, doorkeeper, and subdeacon as well. There was Jane Frost, the organist, who with her anæmic complexion and hair pale as raw silk looked, seated at the little Positive organ, like a St. Cecilia in faded tempera. There were half a dozen sleepy choirboys, who woke up when the Oaktown party arrived and opened their eyes so wide that it seemed improbable they would ever again close them in sleep. There was a labourer whom Dorward employed in the garden, and five minutes after Mass had begun there was Mrs. Gladstone, dressed in what looked by candlelight like a bridal costume of spangled white satin. Mark watched his flock during Mass. He could see that they were perplexed by Dorward's mutterings, by his genuflexions and bowings and kissing of the altar, and, most of all, by his violent and rapid crossings during the Canon, which to anyone who did not grasp the significance of his gestures might have given the impression that he was stirring up something that simply would not mix. Yet they were evidently aware of reality beyond the outward appearance of strangeness, and when Mass was over and Dorward led the way to the Crib, they followed him like little children who approach a Christmas tree. It was a Crib of the most elaborate kind, with ox and ass, and shepherds, and angels suspended above on wires from the roof of the church. But Dorward's prayers before the image of the Holy Child were simple enough, and by the way his pilgrims were behaving Mark felt sure that their pilgrimage had been worth while.

When the service was over, Dorward invited everybody to come down to the Parsonage and have hot

soup.

"But, Father, there's no fire," Mrs. Gladstone protested.

"Why didn't you keep it in, Mrs. Gladstone?"

“Well, Father, I asked you, and you told me not to." "Then you must light it again, Mrs. Gladstone," Dorward said severely.

"But, Father," his housekeeper sighed, "there's no stock."

"Tut-tut-tut! I'm sorry," said the hospitable Vicar, "but I'm afraid that we can't offer you hot soup. What can we offer them, Mrs. Gladstone?"

"I could get out some mince-pies, Father. But they'd be cold, unless they can wait until I get the fire going again.

"We can offer you some cold mince-pies," Dorward announced. "Delicious mince-pies. Mrs. Gladstone is famous for her mince-pies."

In the end Mrs. Gladstone, who was every bit as hospitable as Dorward himself and who had only been momentarily taken aback at the idea of feeding twenty people at one o'clock in the morning without any warning beforehand that this provision would be expected of her, produced a wonderful collection of dainties, of which all except Mark and Dorward himself ate heartily. They both had to fast, of course, for both had Mass to say on Christmas morning.

It was nearly half-past three when the Oaktown pilgrims reached home. Mark had not attempted on the way back to expatiate on the religious aspect of the season, and he was beginning to wonder if from a religious standpoint this tiring walk back had been worth while. Would it mean anything more than a jolly evening, in the course of which games had been played and crackers pulled, and, as an original way of winding things up, a long walk had been taken to a funny little church where an eccentric parson had held a queer kind of a service? The answer to his question came from Jack Diamond, who with the Bagnall boys was the first to reach his

destination. The old man paused in the starlit roadway and held Mark's hand.

"Well, Padre, I guess I've knocked about more than most and spent Christmas in most kinds of any old way. But I never spent it so sweet as this one. Speaking for myself, but I guess I shouldn't be far out if I was to say I was speaking for all of us, I've had a rare good time, and I seemed to get the hang of it all more to-night than I ever did."

This was all that Mark had hoped, and he was glad. If anything was wanted to make him feel more surely the good will of this night, it was when Pluepott insisted on driving him and Carrie all the way back to St. Luke's Vicarage.

CHAPTER IX

PREACHING

MARK's arrival with Carrie in a state of complete fatigue at half-past three of Christmas morning created a good deal of feeling in the Vicarage.

"I hope she won't be hors de combat for long," Mark said to Mrs. Middleditch, when the housekeeper complained to him bitterly of the way Caroline was setting about her Christmas duties at home.

"Of course, she oughtn't to have taken so long to come back! And I'm surprised at you, Mr. Lidderdale. Why, I couldn't think whatever it was when I heard her go blundering up the stairs to her room. 'Surely,' I said to myself, the house can't be on fire at this time in the morning?'"

"Ah, well," Mark replied with a smile, "I dare say the shepherds got into trouble with the Bethlehem farmers for going off like that with a host of angels, and leaving their sheep to look after themselves."

It was obvious to Mark that the Vicar disapproved of his behaviour, but as it would have been difficult for him to blame his curate openly for what he had done nothing was said.

This was the last excitement for many weeks. Parochial life pursued its dull course; and though Mark tried to do his duty with as much added enthusiasm as would put some life into a workaday task, he did not feel that the first six months of his priesthood were being fruitful either to himself or to the parishioners of St. Luke's. The Vicar steadily put difficulties in the way of developing the Oaktown side of Mark's activities by insisting that, whenever he did celebrate over there, he should make use of Major Kettlewell's barn. This usually involved a correspondence with the Major, who