On a week-day morning a small congregation, consisting mainly of women and girls, rose from its knees in the mouldy nave of All Saints’ church, Melchester, at the end of a service without a sermon.
They were about to disperse, when a smart footstep, entering the porch and coming up the central passage, arrested their attention. The step echoed with a ring unusual in a church; it was the clink of spurs. Everybody looked.
A young cavalry soldier in a red uniform, with the three chevrons of a sergeant upon his sleeve, strode up the aisle, with an embarrassment which was only the more accented by the intense vigour of his step, and by the determination upon his face to show none.
A slight flush had mounted his cheek by the time he had run the gauntlet between these females; but, passing on through the chancel arch, he never paused till he came close to the altar railing. Here for a moment he stood alone.
The officiating curate, who had not yet doffed his surplice, perceived the new-comer and followed him to the communion-space.
He whispered to the soldier, and then beckoned to the clerk, who in his turn whispered to an elderly woman, apparently his wife, and they also went up the chancel steps. '’Tis a wedding! ' murmured some of the women, brightening. 'Let’s wait! ' The majority again sat down.
There was a creaking of machinery behind, and some of the young ones turned their heads.
From the interior face of the west wall of the tower projected a little canopy with a quarter-jack and small bell beneath it, the automaton being driven by the same clock machinery that struck the large bell in the tower.
Between the tower and the church was a close screen, the door of