authority of their appearance and position than by their size. One was a
square, red-brick mansion in the centre of the village, surrounded by a
high, redbrick wall enclosing a garden. Another was a big, low, graceful
building with wings. It had once been a monastery. It was covered with
ivy, which grew thick and hungry upon it, and it was called the
Cloistered House. The last of the three was of wood, and of no great
size--a severely plain but dignified structure, looking like some
council-hall of a past era. Its heavy oak doors and windows with diamond
panes, and its air of order, cleanliness and serenity, gave it a
commanding influence in the picture. It was the key to the history of
the village--a Quaker Meeting-house.

Involuntarily the village had built itself in such a way that it made a
wide avenue from the common at one end to the Meeting-house on the gorse-
grown upland at the other. With a demure resistance to the will of its
makers the village had made itself decorative. The people were
unconscious of any attractiveness in themselves or in their village.
There were, however, a few who felt the beauty stirring around them.
These few, for their knowledge and for the pleasure which it brought,
paid the accustomed price. The records of their lives were the only
notable history of the place since the days when their forefathers
suffered for the faith.

One of these was a girl--for she was still but a child when she died;
and she had lived in the Red Mansion with the tall porch, the wide garden
behind, and the wall of apricots and peaches and clustering grapes. Her
story was not to cease when she was laid away in the stiff graveyard
behind the Meeting-house. It was to go on in the life of her son, whom
to bring into the world she had suffered undeserved, and loved with a
passion more in keeping with the beauty of the vale in which she lived