Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/84

74 not even think whether the face were beautiful or not—it simply arrested him, that was all. Presently the girl changed her position so that he could no longer see her face, and with a pang like terror, he saw it suddenly vanish from his gaze, and become lost and merged in the great mass of bonnets and hats and faces. He tried to keep his eyes resolutely on the spot where it had disappeared, as one tries to keep his eyes fastened on the spot where something has gone down at sea; but like the sea, the mass of faces seemed dancing and shifting under his look. At last he was rewarded. The girl turned her head again, so that for one brief moment he saw her profile, and also noted, with the eagerness of a detective, that she wore a black hat, with one single upright feather of bright scarlet in it.

Slowly, and with a bewildered wonder at himself all the time, John skirted the great semicircle of seats, pushed his way through and past knot after knot of men and women, and drew nearer and nearer the seat where the girl sat. As one after another saw him, noted his absorbed and grave look, exclamations and conjectures were whispered on all sides. There were many of the Deerway Methodists on the ground.

John Bassett stood no chance of being unobserved. Many a soul warmed with hope for his salvation on seeing him in this unwonted place. One good old Methodist woman who had nursed