"Yes, I remember. And the service is at Minster. We can walk across the hills."
"May I go with you?" asked Mr. Hamleigh.
"Do you like week-day services?" inquired Jessie, with rather a mischievous sparkle in her keen grey eyes.
"I adore them," answered Angus, who had not been inside a church on a week-day since he was best man at a friend's wedding.
"Then we will all go together," said Jessie. "May Brook bring the pony-carriage to fetch us home, Mrs. Tregonell? I have an idea that Mr. Hamleigh won't be equal to the walk home."
"More than equal to twenty such walks!" answered Angus, gaily. "You under-estimate the severity of the training to which I have submitted myself during the last three weeks."
"The pony-carriage may as well meet you in any case," said Mrs. Tregonell. And the order was straightway given.
They started at ten o'clock, giving themselves ample leisure for a walk of something over two miles—a walk by hill and valley, and rushing stream, and picturesque wooden bridge—through a deep gorge where the dark-red cattle were grouped against a background of gorse and heather—a walk of which one could never grow weary—so lonely, so beautiful, so perfect a blending of all that is wildest and all that is most gracious in Nature—an Alpine ramble on a small scale.
Minster Church lies in a hollow of the hill, so shut in by the wooded ridge which shelters its grey walls, that the stranger comes upon it as an architectural surprise.
"How is it you have never managed to finish your tower?" asked Mr. Hamleigh, surveying the rustic fane with a critical air, as he descended to the churchyard by some rugged stone steps on the side of the grassy hill. "You cannot be a particularly devout people, or you would hardly have allowed your parish church to remain in this stunted and stinted condition."