to do with his Sunday clothes as with the Sabbath day, and that
it interfered but little with an altogether peculiar calm which
appeared to him to belong in its own right to the Sunday, whether
its light flowed in the sunny cataracts of June, or oozed through
the spongy clouds of November. As he walked again to the Alton,
or Old Town in the evening, the filmy floats of white in the lofty
blue, the droop of the long dark grass by the side of the short
brown corn, the shadows pointing like all lengthening shadows
towards the quarter of hope, the yellow glory filling the air and
paling the green below, the unseen larks hanging aloft--like
air pitcher plants that overflowed in song--like electric jars
emptying themselves of the sweet thunder of bliss in the flashing
of wings and the trembling of melodious throats; these were indeed
of the summer but the cup of rest had been poured out upon them;
the Sabbath brooded like an embodied peace over the earth, and
under its wings they grew sevenfold peaceful--with a peace that
might be felt, like the hand of a mother pressed upon the half
sleeping child. The rusted iron cross on the eastern gable of the
old church stood glowing lustreless in the westering sun; while the
gilded vane, whose business was the wind, creaked radiantly this
way and that, in the flaws from the region of the sunset: its shadow
flickered soft on the new grave, where the grass of the wounded
sod was drooping. Again seated on a neighbour stone, Malcolm found
his friend.

"See," said the schoolmaster as the fisherman sat down beside him,
"how the shadow from one grave stretches like an arm to embrace
another! In this light the churchyard seems the very birthplace of
shadows: see them flowing out of the tombs as from fountains, to
overflow the world! Does the morning or the evening light suit such