246 IDLEHURST : 



is hardly one of the " great-house " folk, not many 

 of the farm people and outliers. Near to where I sit 

 are three or four very old men, two of them in the 

 white frocks of years gone by. They will remember 

 the time when there was no organ, but a gallery 

 with singers, a clarionet, and an "octave," and the 

 school-children to help out the anthems ; when school 

 was held in the church ; when all was done on 

 ampler, easier lines. 



The Rector's voice, neither dry nor dramatic, of a 

 quality which seems to lose itself in the sense it con- 

 veys, begins the service as the last beat of the bourdon 

 dies away. I have an inherent trick of the mind in 

 standing back at odd times, to see things as it were 

 at a little distance; and just now I find myself 

 wondering how the immemorial words come to old 

 Tomsett, sitting for sixty years by the same pillar 

 in the aisle ; and whether they ever penetrate the 

 feathered and ribboned head of Mae'ry Bish. I hear 

 the clear monotone and the answering roll of the 

 response, the rustle and shuffle of the people that 

 stand up for the Psalms, while I think of the genera- 

 tions who were here on such nights as this in three 

 centuries past the folk whose names are yellow in 

 the Register Book, whose heirs erected the range of 



