for ten miles round, that has not been built by my ancestors." Possibly this assertion needed not only a grain but a block of salt.
But Dariel was of good strong faith, without which a woman deserves only to be a man. She opened the gate, and let me in, so beautifully that I was quite afraid.
"You must not be frightened," she said, with a very fine rally of herself, to encourage mine, "it is the House of the Lord, and you have come into it with your hat on. But you did not know, because there is no roof."
No roof, and no walls, and no anything left, except the sweet presence of this young maid. I took off my hat, and tried to think of the Creed, and the Catechism, and my many pious ancestors, if there had been any. And I almost tumbled over a great pile of ruin stones.
"We will not go in there, because – because we are not thinking of it properly," she pointed, as she spoke, to an inner circle of ruins, with some very fine blackberries just showing colour; and suddenly I knew it as the sanctuary, in which I had first descried her kneeling figure. "But here we may sit down, without – without – it is a long word, Mr. Cran-lee, I cannot quite recall it."
"Desecration," I suggested, and she looked at me with doubt, as if the word had made the thing. "But you do not think it will be that, if I speak of my dear father here?"
I was very near telling her that we think nothing of such old monkish ruins, except to eat our chicken-pie, and drink our bottled beer in their most holy places; but why should I shock her feelings so? Little knows the ordinary English girl, that when she displays her want of reverence for the things above her, she is doing all she can to kill that feeling towards herself, which is one of her choicest gifts.
"Dariel, you may be quite sure of this," I replied, after taking my seat upon a stone, over against the one she had chosen, but lower, so that I could look up at her; "a place of holy memories like this is the very spot especially fitted for – for consideration of your dear father. Some of my ancestors no doubt were the founders of this ancient chapel, so that I speak with some authority, upon a point of that sort."
All content has a murmur in it, according to the laws of earth; and within a few yards of my joy, the brook with perpetual change of tone, and rise and fall of liquid tune, was making as sweet a melody as a man can stop to hearken. But the brook might have ceased its noise for shame, at the music of my Dariel's voice. She gave me a timid glance at first, not for any care of me, but doubt of unlocking of her heart; and then the power of a higher love swept away all sense of self.
"My father, as you must have learned already, is one of the greatest men that have ever lived. There are many great men in this country also, in their way, which is very good; but they do not appear to cast away all regard for their own interests, in such a degree as my father does; and although they are very high Christians, they stop, or at least they appear to stop short of their doctrines, when the fear arises of not providing for themselves. They call it a question of the public good, and they are afraid of losing commerce.
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