Page:Milady at Arms (1937).pdf/65

 Still, it would do no harm to try them! But each window disappointed Sally afresh.

At last, turning the corner upon the eastern end, she remembered that there was a door there—a fact her anxiety had eradicated from her memory, though she had entered often enough on Sundays with Mistress Todd and the other women—that being their side, with the men seated upon the opposite side and the boys at the back of the church, with a tithing man to keep them in order. This door, to Sally's great joy, proved to be ajar, and she stepped inside.

A warm, musty odor came rushing to meet her, the church interior evidently having retained its heat from the day; and now Sally shrugged her wet, dripping shoulders, grateful for the warmth she had been protesting earlier. Opening a near-by pew door which, with outspread, groping hand she succeeded in locating, she stepped inside the pew and, seating herself upon the warm wooden bench, spread out her wet skirts to dry.

The intense darkness denied her gaze. But she did not need vision to know how the pulpit, bare save for its narrow bench built against the wall, its four wooden pegs above that bench, faced her, flanked right and left by Church officials' pews. The drumming of the rain upon the roof was like a bombardment, thrum, bang, boom! Then with a swish stopped suddenly. And in the abrupt