Then a man called something aloud from fifty yards away; but there was
no voice to echo him. The folk just watched their lord go by, staring on
him as on some strange sight, forgetting even to salute him. And so in
silence he passed on.


II

Within, the church murmured with low talking. Already two-thirds of it
was full, and all faces turned and re-turned to the door at every
footstep or sound. As the bells ceased a sigh went up, as if a giant
drew breath; then, once again, the murmuring began.

The church was as most were in those days. It was but a little place,
yet it had had in old days great treasures of beauty. There had been,
until some ten or twelve years ago, a carved screen that ran across the
chancel arch, with the Rood upon it, and St. Mary and St. John on this
side and that. The high-altar, it was remembered, had been of stone
throughout, surrounded with curtains on the three sides, hanging between
posts that had each a carven angel, all gilt. Now all was gone,
excepting only the painted windows (since glass was costly). The chancel
was as bare as a barn; beneath the whitewash, high over the place where
the old canopy had hung, pale colours still glimmered through where,
twelve years ago, Christ had sat crowning His Mother. The altar was
gone; its holy slab served now as the pavement within the west door,
where the superstitious took pains to step clear of it. The screen was
gone; part lay beneath the tower; part had been burned; Christ's Cross
held up the roof of the shed where the minister kept his horse; the
three figures had been carted off to Derby to help swell the Protestant