floated to their ears the distant sound of the hamlet church-bell.

"Now let us sit here a while and listen," said Kenelm, seating himself
on the baluster of the bridge. "I see that you brought away your pipe
from the inn, and provided yourself with tobacco: refill the pipe and
listen."

Tom half smiled and obeyed.

"O friend," said Kenelm, earnestly, and after a long pause of thought,
"do you not feel what a blessed thing it is in this mortal life to be
ever and anon reminded that you have a soul?"

Tom, startled, withdrew the pipe from his lips, and muttered,--

"Eh!"

Kenelm continued,--

"You and I, Tom, are not so good as we ought to be: of that there is
no doubt; and good people would say justly that we should now be
within yon church itself rather than listening to its bell. Granted,
my friend, granted; but still it is something to hear that bell, and
to feel by the train of thought which began in our innocent childhood,
when we said our prayers at the knees of a mother, that we were lifted
beyond this visible Nature, beyond these fields and woods and waters,
in which, fair though they be, you and I miss something; in which
neither you nor I are as happy as the kine in the fields, as the birds
on the bough, as the fishes in the water: lifted to a consciousness of
a sense vouchsafed to you and to me, not vouchsafed to the kine, to