Grace came into the probable class. Moreover—“Ha!” said the minister, recollection rising to the surface. He took from a second shelf a book of record, made not by himself, but by his predecessor, the godly Master Thomson. It ran back twenty years and more. He found near the beginning of the book what he was looking for. Ellice Maybank. Suspect of being a witch, and dragged through Hawthorn Pond. The said Ellice swam. Died of a fever before she could be brought to trial.
“Ha!” said Master Clement; “it descends! it descends!” But he was a careful and scrupulous man, and so he put Grace’s name only up on the probable wall.
It was growing late. A wind had arisen and moaned around the house. He went to the window and looked out at the church and the church yews. A waning moon hung in the east. The yews were black, the church was palely silvered; Master Clement regarded the church with eyes that softened, grew almost mild. The plain interior, the plain exterior, the hard stones, the tower lifting squarely and uncompromisingly toward the span of sky that was called the zenith—whatever of romance was in Master Clement’s nature clung and centred itself here! Hawthorn Church was his beloved, it was his bride.
He stood by the window for some minutes, then turning began again to pace the room, and then once more to read in the Bible. It chanced now—his main readings that night having been concluded—that he had eyes for passages of a different timbre. He read words of old, firm wisdom, Oriental tenderness, mystic rapture, strainings toward unity—golden words that time would not willingly let slip. Many a soul, many a tradition, many a mind had left their mark in that book, and some were very beautiful, and the voices of some were music and long-lasting truth and carried like trumpets.
Master Clement read, and his soul mounted: only it mounted not to where it could overlook the earlier reading in the same Bible. It never came to a point where it could hold the two side by side and say, “Judge you which concept and which mind you will accept as brother to your own! For many minds have made this book.” Master Clement read, and his soul lightened and lifted, but not so far as to change settled perspectives. Had he not read these passages a thousand times before? The names remained upon the wall, and when after a time he undressed and laid himself in bed, they stayed before him without a shadow of wavering until he slept. Indeed, he drowsed away upon the word CONVICTED—
Morning came. He rose at an ascetic’s hour, dressed in a half-light, and ate his frugal breakfast while the day was yet at the dawn. The two women waited upon him; breakfast over, he read the Scriptures to them, and standing, prayed above their bowed heads. Later he went out into the hedged path between his house and the church and began his customary slow walking to and fro for morning exercise. The sun was coming up, a multitude of birds sang in the ancient trees. Master Clement walked, small, arid, meagre, and upright, his hands at his sides, and presently, in his walking, caught sight of something white at the edge of the path. It proved to be a hand’s-breadth of paper, kept in place by a pebble. He stooped and picked it up. On it was marked in rude letters, JOAN HERON. He turned it over—nothing on the other side, blank paper save for the name. He walked on with it in his hand. Twenty paces farther there was another piece of paper, held by another pebble, and a fair duplicate of the first—JOAN HERON. Well within the churchyard he found the third piece—JOAN HERON. ASK JOAN HERON WHO GAVE HER THE RUE THAT’S PLANTED IN HER GARDEN.
CHAPTER XVII
MOTHER SPURAWAY