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Updated: May 9, 2025
The little chapel was fairly cool, and through a door very near the altar, open to the garden, came the scent of mignonette on the air. Besides the motionless figures at the altar-rail there was no one else in the chapel. At eight o'clock two small brown figures came in and knelt bowed down in the middle of the sanctuary.
The months and the plans were profitable, it seems, for one splendid evening saw him at the altar-rail beside the fairest girl in all the Southland, the queen of a thousand hearts. Agatha Holmes became Mrs. Cannable, and thereby hangs a tale.
The woes of humanity grieved him as they grieved her, and she used to say she did not care what he believed so long as he gave his life for the needy. It was when he advanced to the altar-rail to speak that the man best appeared. His voice, which was usually low and full of melody, could be something terrible when it rose in denunciation of sin.
Yes, there was Miss Mary's lily with its five blossoms right on the stand by the pulpit. How beautiful it looked, showing above the evergreens covering the altar-rail! And there were Mrs. James' geraniums, a whole row of them no one but Mrs. James ever had geraniums worth much. And there were two little spruce trees, one at each end of the altar-rail, with their cones all on.
In his earnest pleading his voice would rise from a conversational tone until it rang penetratingly through the hall, and he would emphasize his words with a startling resound from his open palm upon the altar-rail. The mountaineers had brought their entire families, and during the service the smaller children would fall asleep, to awaken with a cry at the changing vibrations.
Now I sat the other night and watched those people you got up around the altar-rail, groaning and shouting and crying, and the others jumping up and down with excitement, and Sister Lovejoy did you see her? coming out of her pew and regularly waltzing in the aisle, with her eyes shut, like a whirling dervish I positively believe it was all that made me ill. I couldn't stand it.
Christopher, the youngest of the three brothers, was king last. His end was no better than that of the rest. Indeed, it was worse. Hardly yet forty years old, he died poisoned, it was said, by the Abbot Arnfast, in the sacrament as he knelt at the altar-rail in the Ribe cathedral. He was buried in the chancel where the penitents going to the altar walk over his grave.
A set of boys and children, mixed with some old crones, had got possession of the altar-rail, and were hugging it with restless motions, as if in expectation. Though Reding had continued standing, no one would have noticed him; but he saw the time was come for him to kneel, and accordingly he moved into a corner seat on the bench nearest him.
We knelt at the altar-rail, and Gervasio knelt above us upon the altar's lowest step. Somewhere behind us knelt Bianca's women, who had followed us to the church. Thus we waited for close upon two hours that were as an eternity. And kneeling there, the eyes of my soul conned closely the scroll of my young life as it had been unfolded hitherto.
And then, with one of those tricks that memory sometimes plays, he saw the altar-rail, where he had stood beside her she in her bridal robes, her soft blue eyes turned toward his; he heard again the responses, "for better or for worse" "until death do us part," caught the scent of flowers and the peal of the organ as they turned and walked down the aisle, past the throng of richly dressed guests.
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