his people had something to do with taxes and tithes, and that a certain
material respectability and security attended his votive sigh. God and
the reigning sovereign of the realm preserved a decorous alliance in the
royal arms that appeared above the official notices. Presently he pushed
open the door gently and entered the nave. For a moment it seemed to him
as if the arched gloom of the woods he had left behind was repeated
in the dim aisle and vaulted roof; there was an earthy odor, as if the
church itself, springing from the fertilizing dust below, had taken root
in the soil; the chequers of light from the faded stained-glass windows
fell like the flicker of leaves on the pavement. He paused before the
cold altar, and started, for beside him lay the recumbent figure of
a warrior pillowed on his helmet with the paraphernalia of his trade
around him. A sudden childish memory of the great Western plains, and
the biers of the Indian "braves" raised on upright poles against the
staring sky and above the sunbaked prairie, rushed upon him. There,
too, had lain the weapons of the departed chieftain; there, too, lay the
Indian's "faithful hound," here simulated by the cross-legged
crusader's canine effigy. And now, strangest of all, he found that this
unlooked-for recollection and remembrance thrilled him more at that
moment than the dead before him. Here they rested,--the Atherlys of
centuries; recumbent in armor or priestly robes, upright in busts that
were periwigged or hidden in long curls, above the marble record of
their deeds and virtues. Some of these records were in Latin,--an
unknown tongue to Peter,--some in a quaint English almost as
unintelligible; but none as foreign to him as the dead themselves. Their
banners waved above his head; their voices filled the silent church, but
fell upon his vacant eye and duller ear. He was none of them.

Presently he was conscious of a footstep, so faint, so subtle, that it
might have come from a peregrinating ghost. He turned quickly and saw