Here, spying a delicate pinnacle gleaming through the trees, she rightly concluded that it belonged to the church she intended to visit, and finding a footpath leading across the fields, she followed it. It was the same path which Walden had for so many years been accustomed to take in his constant walks to and from the Manor. It soon brought her to the highroad which ran through the village, and across this it was but a few steps to the gate of the churchyard. Laying one hand on her dog's neck, she checked the great creature's gambols and compelled him to walk sedately by her side, as with hushed footsteps she entered the 'Sleepy Hollow' of death's long repose, and went straight up to the church door which, as usual, stood open.
"Stay here, Plato!" she whispered to her four-footed comrade, who, understanding the mandate, lay down at once submissively in the porch to wait her pleasure.
Entering the sacred shrine she stood still,--awed by its exquisite beauty and impressive simplicity. The deep silence, the glamour of the soft vari-coloured light that flowed through the lancet windows on either side,--the open purity of the nave, without any disfiguring pews or fixed seats to mar its clear space,--(for the chairs which were used at service were all packed away in a remote corner out of sight)--the fair, slender columns, springing up into flowering capitals, like the stems of palms breaking into leaf- coronals,--the dignified plainness of the altar, with that strange white sarcophagus set in front of it,--all these taken together, composed a picture of sweet sanctity and calm unlike anything she had ever seen before. Her emotional nature responded to the beautiful in all things, and this small perfectly designed House of Prayer, with its unknown saintly occupant at rest within its walls, touched her almost to tears. Stepping on tip-toe up to the altar- rails, she instinctively dropped on her knees, while she read all that could be seen of the worn inscription on the sarcophagus from that side-'In Resurrectione--Sanctorum--Resurget.' The atmosphere around her seemed surcharged with mystical suggestions,--a vague poetic sense of the super-human and divine moved her to a faint touch of fear, and made her heart beat more quickly than its wont.
"It is lovely--lovely!" she murmured under her breath, as she rose from her kneeling attitude--"The whole church is a perfect gem of architecture! I have never seen anything more beautiful in its way,- -not even the Chapel of the Thorn at Pisa. And according to Mrs. Spruce's account, the man I met this morning--the quizzical parson with the grey-brown curly-locks, did it all at his own expense--he must really be quite clever,--such an unusual thing for a country clergyman!"