Hathercourt

“The haunted aisles, the gathering gloom, By some stray shaft of eve made fair; The stillness of the neighbouring air, The faded legends of the tomb. I loved them all...” Songs of Two Worlds .
Hathercourt Church is not beautiful, though the internal evidence in favour of its having at one time been so is considerable. It has suffered sorely at the hands of plasterers and white-washers; yet the utmost efforts of these misguided people have not altogether succeeded in effacing the traces of a better state of things—there is still grandeur in the sweep of the lofty roof, oak-raftered behind its dingy white covering; still “meaning and mystery” in the quaintly varying windows; much satisfaction for the learned in such matters, and indeed for the unlearned too, in the unmistakable beauty of the carved screen, the one object untampered with since the days when it gladdened the eyes of the ancient men who fashioned it, long, long ago.
A very long “long ago” that time used to seem to Mary Western when, in the intervals of her attention to the service, she sometimes dreamed of those far-away days. She was not much given to dreaming, but in Hathercourt Church there were circumstances under which the temptation became irresistible.
After a course of years the words of the morning service, especially when read, Sunday after Sunday, by the same familiar voice with precisely the same intonations, are apt to grow monotonous; and had Mary not occasionally allowed her thoughts to go wool-gathering, the chances are that her brown straw hat would have been seen to nod, and she might have fallen asleep altogether. For that part of Sunday morning which preceded their appearance in church was a tiring and trying ordeal to the elder daughters of the Western household. There was the early class at the school, there were “the boys” at home to keep peace among, there were the very little children in the nursery to coax into unwonted quiet, for on Sunday mornings “papa” really must not be disturbed, and mamma, “poor mamma,” looked to her girls to do their part in helping her.