CHAPTER II
THE CRUSADERS' CHAPEL
The church dedicated to St Gabriel the Messenger was enshrined in a leafy glade. No churlish wall marked the limits of the sacred ground, and from the ancient building a soft green sward stretched on all sides to the circle of oaks which sheltered it from the rude winds. In this circle were two openings counter to each other. The lower one admitted those who came from Colester into the precincts; the upper gave entrance to a larger glade, in which the dead had been buried for centuries. This also was without a wall, and it was strange beyond words to come suddenly upon an assemblage of tombstones in the heart of a wood. From this sylvan God's-acre a path climbed upward to the moor, and passed onward for some little distance until it was obliterated by the purple heather. Then for leagues stretched the trackless, treeless waste to the foot of distant hills.
Of no great size, the chapel was an architectural gem. Built in the form of a cross, a square tower rose where the four arms met, and this contained a famous peal of bells. The grey stone walls were carved with strange and holy devices, lettered with sacred texts in mediæval Latin, and here and there were draped in darkly-green ivy. The sharp angles of the building had been rounded by the weather, the stones were mellowed by time, and, nestling under the great boughs of the oaks, it had a holy, restful look. "Like a prayer made visible," said Mr Tempest.
With his companion he had paused at the entrance to the glade, so as to enjoy the beauty of the scene. Round the chapel swept the swallows, pigeons whirled aloft in the cloudless blue sky; from the leafy trees came the cooing of doves, and the cawing of rooks could be heard. All the wild life of the wood haunted the chapel, and the place was musical with forest minstrelsy. As the beauty of scene and sound crept into their hearts, the vicar quoted Spenser's lovely lines:—
"A little lowly hermitage it was,
Downe in a dale, hard by a forest side."
"Just so," said Pratt, in the hard, unromantic way of the twentieth century; "it's the kind of church you see in pictures."
"The church in which Sir Percival met Sir Galahad," replied Tempest.
The American felt the influence of the place despite the material faith which he held. There was a vein of romance in his nature which had been buried beneath the common-place and selfish. But in this holy solitude, at the door of the shrine, his spiritual self came uppermost, and when he stood bare-headed in the nave his talkative tongue was silent. The influence of the unseen surrounded him, and, like Moses, he was inclined to put off his shoes, "for this is holy ground," murmured his heart.