The dark shadows lying so still on the dirty white mounds had a
stealthy, crouching look, and the large soft leaves of a plane-tree
flapped helplessly against the shale with the air of important people
who whisper 'Alas!'

Abel was on ahead. Suddenly he turned round, excited as a boy.

'They've started!' he cried. 'Hark at the music! They allus begin with
the organ.'

Hazel followed him, eager for joy, running obedient and hopeful at the
heels of life as a young lamb runs with its mother. She forgot her dark
intuitions; she only remembered that she wanted to enjoy herself, and
that if she was a good girl, surely, surely God would let her.




Chapter 8


The chapel and minister's house at God's Little Mountain were all in
one--a long, low building of grey stone surrounded by the graveyard,
where stones, flat, erect, and askew, took the place of a flower-garden.
Away to the left, just over a rise, the hill was gashed by the grey
steeps of the quarries. In front rose another curve covered with thick
woods. To the right was the batch, down which a road--in winter a
water-course--led into the valley. Behind the house God's Little
Mountain sloped softly up and away apparently to its possessor.