churchyard during the year. And the wardens and vestrymen were Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians or gentlemen professing no faith, quite indifferently.

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These people were hot debaters of politics and religion—especially religion. When the question of immersion or pedo-baptism was up, each was ready and eager to maintain the creed of his own church with all the arguments that had been formulated for that purpose generations before and worn smooth to the tongue by oft-repeated use. But this fervor made no difference whatever in the loyalty of their allegiance to their old family church at Shrub Hill. There they found common ground of tradition and affection. There they were all alike in right of inheritance. There all of them expected to be buried by the side of their forefathers.

It has been said already that services were held at Shrub Hill on two Sundays of the month. As the old rector lived within a few minutes’ walk of the church, and had no other duty than its ministry, there might have been services there every Sunday in the year, except that such a practice would have interfered with the desire of those who constituted its congregation to attend their own particular Baptist or{94} Presbyterian churches, which held services on the other Sundays. It was no part of the spirit or mission of the family church thus to interfere with the religious preferences of its members, and so, from time immemorial, there had been services at Shrub Hill only upon two Sundays of the month.

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Everybody attended those services—every gentleman and every gentlewoman at least. That is to say, all went to the church and the women with a few of the older men went in. The rest of the gentlemen gathered in groups under the trees outside—for the church stood in the midst of an unbroken woodland—and chatted in low tones while the service was in progress. Thus they fulfilled their gentlemanly obligations of church going, without the fatigue of personal participation in the services.

The gentlemen rode to church on horseback. The ladies, old and young alike, went thither in their family carriages. Many of these, especially the younger ones, were accustomed to go everywhere else in the saddle, but to church, propriety and tradition required them to go decorously in the great lumbering vehicles of family state.

The gentlemen arrived first and took their{95} places at the church door to greet the gentlewomen and give them a hand 

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