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It was a large barn with windows, fronted by a square tower crowned with a kind of wooden bell inverted and raised on legs, out of which rose a slender spire with the sharp-billed weathercock at its summit. Inside, tall, square pews with flapping seats, and a gallery running round three sides of the building. On the fourth side the pulpit, with a huge, dusty sounding-board hanging over it.

The pews are high, and on the average they will hold six persons each. Seven might get into them on a pinch; but if the number were much extended beyond that point, either abraison or blue places through violent pressure would be the consequence. Two or three pews at the top end will hold twelve each; but that apostolic number is not very often observed in them.

Soon a woman arrived with the key of the church-door, and we entered the simple old edifice, which has the pavement of lettered tombstones, the sturdy pillars and low arches and other ordinary characteristics of an English country church. One or two pews, probably those of the gentlefolk of the neighborhood, were better furnished than the rest, but all in a modest style.

Along each side there is a row of free seats about 50 altogether capable of accommodating upwards of 300 persons. There are also many free seats in the gallery. The present incumbent has an idea that he has made some addition to this accomodation; but people who have known the church ever since it was built say that the extra "free pews" appropriated for the poor by him were never charged for.

"I tell you what, my good Sir, you are on the way to preach your church empty. The pews have no souls to be saved, I believe," and Ambrose chuckled over his little joke. "What of the souls of the absent congregation?" asked Mr Liversedge. "Oh, they'll have to get saved elsewhere," answered Ambrose. "Then, if they do get saved, what reason shall I have to regret their absence?

The great plum puddings which served for wedding cakes were pulled out of the same boiling froth, tightly wrapped in their cloth jackets, with long fish "pews" or forks. Unlimited spruce beer, brewed with molasses and fortified with "Old Jamaica," flowed from a large barrel during the two days that the celebration lasted.

"They're not Socialists," agreed McCrae. "But there is room in the back and sides of the church, and there is the early service and the Sunday night service, when the pews are free. Why don't they come to these?" "Religion doesn't appeal to them." "Why not?" "Ye've asked me a riddle. All I know is that the minute ye begin to preach, off they go and never come back."

A large square pew and a smaller one behind it in the transept were for centuries the recognized seats of the Aldington Manor family and their servants, and so remained until the restoration of the church in 1885, when the pews were taken down and a row of chairs as near as possible to the old position was allotted for the use of the same occupants.

"Why, certainly," said Miss Bolton, "because there would be no pews to dust." "But not only in office, but in person, or rather in character, she must make her exit from the church," said White. "Impossible," said Miss Bolton; "are women, then, to remain Protestants?" "Oh, no," answered White, "the good lady will reappear, only in another character; she will be a widow."

The church Walter had chosen for the purpose, was a mouldy old church in a yard, hemmed in by a labyrinth of back streets and courts, with a little burying-ground round it, and itself buried in a kind of vault, formed by the neighbouring houses, and paved with echoing stones It was a great dim, shabby pile, with high old oaken pews, among which about a score of people lost themselves every Sunday; while the clergyman's voice drowsily resounded through the emptiness, and the organ rumbled and rolled as if the church had got the colic, for want of a congregation to keep the wind and damp out.