Page:The Heart of England.djvu/198

 necessity of "drawing near to God "—by a life of piety, by private prayer, by communion, by worshipping in this house. His rich, gentle voice saying murmurous things fell upon me as one of sleep's forerunners, and I had just heard him asking the squire and the Bacchus and the rest whether they had not, at the Communion, had visions of "those tabernacles above," when I began to dream a dream which the parson could not have inspired without the help of some very different elf who now lay under the pavement of the nave, or was painted on the wall, or had sat among the rushes when the church was beautiful and young as a country bride. For it seemed that I saw these men and women in a kind of heaven where all day long for ever they did those things which had pleased or most taken hold of them in life. I saw them like the figures painted on the wall, some bright and clear, some dim or broken, some known by hardly more than a defacement of the large light that dwelt there.

There the grave and cheerful carter went home at evening, looking ahead steadily, without sorrow, or alarm, or lassitude, and sometimes turning to his undulating team, noting their still bright harness and speaking to them by name: "Ho! Violet"—"Smiler"—"Darling"—"Swallow." He was even now hungry, a little tired, thinking of his inn at nightfall. Heaven had caught him and made of him a picture of strength, contentment and evening which, in that luminous land, was pleasing yet to mortal men.

There the cowman was leading out the bull, and making the ring jar in its nostrils. Still his back and