The Altar Steps

as on such nights he always hoped, to hear somebody shout "A wreck! A wreck!" A different Mark from

nderous, knocking on the Vicarage door. Mark leapt out of bed; flinging open his window through which the wind rushed in like a flight of angry birds, he heard voices below in the garden shouting "Parson! Parson!

s the cuckoo popped in and out of his door in the clock twelve times. Emma blinked at him in terror, and Mark pulled off all the bedclothe

ressing, "the Captain can sleep in m

y want to go down to t

oup ready, won't you? Because it'll be much better to bring all the crew back here. I don't thi

ther first before you make

e both got lanthorns, and I'll carry ours, so if one blows out we shall be all r

better shut your windows. It's blowing every

adventure. At first in the shelter of the holm-oaks the storm seemed far away overhead; but when they turned the corner and took the road along the valley, the wind caught them full in the face and Mark was blown back violently against the swinging gate of the drive. The light of the lanthorns shining on a rut in the road showed a field-mouse hurrying inland before the rus

e,' said Eddowes. 'It don't take a coastguard to tell that,' said old man Timbury. And then they got to talking one against the other the same as they belong, and they'd soon got back to the same old talk whether Jackie Fisher was the finest admiral who ever lived or no use at all. 'What's the good in your talking to me?' old man Timbury was saying. 'Why afore you was born I've seen' . . . and we all started in to shout 'ships o' the line, frigates, and cavattes,' because we belong to mock him like that, when somebody called 'Hark, listen, wasn't that a rocket?' That fetched us all outside into the road where we stood listening. The wind was blowing harder than ever, and there was a parcel of sea rising. You could hear it against Shag Rock over the wind. Eddowes, he were a bit

tide?" aske

id Ernie Hockin. "And the moon

struggled on hoping that this midnight walk would not come to an abrupt end by his grandfather's declining to go any farther. Above the drumming of the wind the roar of the sea became more audible every moment; the spume was thicker; the end of the valley, ordinarily the meeting-place of sand and grass and small streams with the

Ernie Hockin. "H

tide had swept snarling over the stream an

round by the road,"

nd after scrambling through the hedge emerged in t

t," said the Vicar. "I never remember s

n't you worry about the wall, Mr. Trehawke. The worst of the water i

nd, and he had to crawl on all fours toward the sea. He reached the edge of the cliff just as something like the wings of a gigantic bat flapped across the dim wet moonlight, and before he realized that this was the brig he heard the crashing of her spars. The watchers stood up against the wind, battling with it to fling lines in the vain hope of saving some sailor who was being churned to death in that dreadful creaming of the sea below. Yes, and there were forms of men visible on board; two had climbed the mainmast, which crashed before they could clutch at the ropes that were being flung to them from land, crashed and carried them down shrieking into the surge. Mark found it hard to believe that last summer he had spent many sunlit hours dabbling in t

the Vicar

ging on to a ledge of rock.

dled form below. But either from exhaustion or because he feared to let go of the slippery ledge for one moment the sailor

e rope and get a slip knot und

plunge into what he knows will be very cold water, and then vanished down the rope. Everybody crawled on hand and knees to see what would happen. Mark prayed that Eddowes, who was a great friend of his, would not come to any harm, but that he would rescue the

he shouted. "He's got

that the addition of another resc

s," Eddowes went on, "

cliff shook thei

th me to have a try?" the coastguar

nother. A minute later the slipknot came untied (or that was how the accident was explained) and the Vicar went to join the drowned mar

does come in a moment and for which it is necessary for every human being to prepare his soul. The platitudes of age may often be for youth divine revelations, and there is nothing so stimulating as the unaided apprehension of a great commonplace of existence. The awe with which Mark was filled that night was too vast to evaporate in sentiment, and when two days after this there came news from Africa that his father had died of black-water fever that awe was crystallized indeed. Mark looking round at his small world perceived that nobody was safe. To-morrow his mother might die; to-morrow he might die himself. In any case the deat

le will when others are sorry for them, and then still more because the future for Mark seemed hopeless. How was she to educate him? How clothe him? How feed him even? At her age where and how could she earn money? She reproached herself with having been too ready out of sensitiveness to sacrifice Mark to her own pride. She had had no right to leave her husband and live in the country like this. She should have repressed her own emotion and thought only of the family life, to the maint

neighbours to be generous fought with their native avarice, so that in the end the furniture fetched neither more nor less than had been expected, which was little enough. She kept back enough to establish herself and Mark in rooms, should she be suc

in answer to her prayers, the solution was p

ton H

urst

wbr

mber

r G

are not any too bright. You will, I am sure, pardon my having made these inquiries without reference to you, but I did not feel justified in offering you and my nephew a home with my sister Helen and myself unless I had first assured myself that some such offer was necessary. You are probably aware that for many years my brother James and myself have not been on the best of terms. I on my side found his religious teaching so eccentric as to repel me; he on his side was so bigoted that he could not tolerate my tacit disapproval. Not being a Ritualist but an Evangelical, I ca

who is I believe now twelve years old, has had the necessary schooling I shall be able to secure him a position as an articled clerk, from which if he is honest and industrious he may be able to rise to the position of a junior partner. If you have saved anything from the sale of your father's effects I should advise you to invest the sum. However small it is, you will find the extra money useful, for as I remarked before I shall not be able to afford to do more than lodge and feed you both, educate your son, find him in clothes, and start him in a career on the lines I have already indicated. My local informant tells me that you have kept back a

ionate brot

Lidd

hatever in it was displeasing to her she accepted as the Divine decree, and if anybody had pointed out the inconsistency of some of the opinions therein expr

oy and thank him for his kindness." She explained in detail what Uncle Henry intended to do for them; but Mark would not be enthusiastic. He on

idge?" he asked

or and Stoke Poges where Gray wrote his Elegy, which we learned last summer. You rememb

at he could have said he hated it; but Mark always found it difficult to tell a lie a

h Cass Dale, you will write to your un

gro

o thank people. It m

s you to. So sit down like

my nib is

l find anothe

r, yours ar

excuses. Don't you want to do every

e window he stared out at the yellow November sky, and at the

Vica

cep

Corn

r Uncl

We should enjoy it very much. I am going to tea with a friend of mine ca

ema

oving

a

that the whole letter had to be copied out again before his mother would say that she

At this point Cass declined to go any farther in spite of Mark's reminder that this would

't come up from Church Cov

adn't thought you'd come all the way with me, I'd ha

so far by myself. I've come up the hill with 'ee. Now

turning away in resentment

lfs of shadow in the countryside until Mark could perceive the ghost of a familiar landscape. There came over him, whose emotion had already been sprung by the insensibility of Cass, an overwhelming awareness of parting, and he gave to the landscape the expression of sentiment he had yearned to give his friend. His fear of seeing the spirits of the drowned sailors, or as he passed the churchyard gate of perceiving behind that tamarisk the tall spectre of his grandfather, which on the way down from Pendhu had seemed impossible to combat, had died away; and in his despair at losing this beloved scene he wa

as the glow-worm and the samphire? The ache of separation from Nancepean was assuaged.

said aloud in imitation of St. Fran

r samphire the glow-worm had made a moonlit forest, so brightly

at they may see your good works, and g

use-keeper, to polish well his lamp and tend it with care, so that men passing by in ships should rejoice at his good works and call him brother