Those who could best observe (for the tale was handed on with the
careful accuracy of those who cannot read or write) professed themselves
amazed at the assured ease of the squire. No sound came from the seat
half-hidden behind the reading-desk where he sat alone; and, during the
prayers when he stood or kneeled, he moved as if he understood well
enough what he was at. A great bound Prayer-Book, it was known, rested
before him on the book-board, and he was observed to turn the pages more
than once.

It was, indeed, a heavy task that Mr. Barton had to do. For first there
was the morning prayer, with its psalms, its lessons and its prayers;
next the Litany, and last the communion, in the course of which was
delivered one of the homilies set forth by authority, especially
designed for the support of those who were no preachers--preceded and
followed by a psalm. But all was easy to-day to a man who had such cause
for exultation; his voice boomed heartily out; his face radiated his
pleasure; and he delivered his homily when the time came, with excellent
emphasis and power--all from the reading-desk, except the communion.

Yet it is to be doubted whether the attention of those that heard him
was where their pastor would have desired it to be; since even to these
country-folk the drama of the whole was evident. There, seen full when
he sat down, and in part when he kneeled and stood, was the man who
hitherto had stood to them for the old order, the old faith, the old
tradition--the man whose horse's footsteps had been heard, times and
again, before dawn, in the village street, bearing him to the mystery of
the mass; through whose gate strangers had ridden, perhaps three or four
times in the year, to find harbourage--strangers dressed indeed as plain
gentlemen or yeomen, yet known, every one of them, to be under her