for many years, lusty Cornishmen, moved by the spirit, had hurled down
upon McMahon and his house strident and terrible denunciations.

Materially the chapel had nothing in common with a vineyard; it was built
upon arid land as bare and barren as a rock; not even a blade of grass
grew within a hundred yards of its doors. The grim plainness of the old
drab building was relieved only by a rickety bell-tower so stuffed with
sparrows' nests that the bell within gave forth only a dull and muffled
note. The chapel was surrounded with the framework of a fence only, so
the chapel ground was the chief rendezvous of all the goats of Waddy--and
they were many and various. They gathered in its shade in the summer and
sought its shelter from the biting blast in winter, not always content
with an outside stand; for the goats of Waddy were conscious of their
importance, and of a familiar and impudent breed. Sometimes a matronly
nanny would climb the steps, and march soberly up the aisle in the midst
of one of Brother Tregaskis's lengthy prayers; or a haughty billy,
imposing as the he-goat of the Scriptures, would take his stand within
the door and bay a deep, guttural response to Brother Spence; or two or
three kids would come tumbling over the forms and jumping and bucking in
the open space by the wheezy and venerable organ, spirits of thoughtless
frivolity in the sacred place.

It was Sunday morning and the school was in. The classes were arranged in
their accustomed order, the girls on the right, the boys on the left,
against the walls; down the middle of the chapel the forms were empty;
nearest to the platform on either hand of Brother Ephraim Shine, the
superintendent, were the Sixth Class little boys and girls, the latter
painfully starched and still, with hair tortured by many devices into
damp links or wispy spirals that passed by courtesy for curls. Very
silent and submissive were little girls of Class VI., impressed by the