Everyone in the village was proud of their church. Though it had been completed before anyone, even Marion’s father, could remember, it still appeared new and clean. It had been built, so the story went, with the assistance of some men from Rutherford, from the creamy pink sandstone cut from a curious cliff-like quarry a mile or two away up in the forest. The huge bits of stone had been eased down a path on log rollers (tree trunks placed on the ground in front of a stone as it rolled down and then the freed roller taken out at the back and put down in front again), and then dragged by ox sledges across the Common to where the stream oozed from the edge of the marsh. Here the stones had been cut and trimmed, then hauled across the stream and up the bank the other side, then dragged on the sledges up the slope to the site of the church. The men from Rutherford had brought with them sacks of a white powdery earth which they described as burnt chalk. This they mixed first with the dust from the cutting of the stone and then with water, and to general amazement this sloppy mess had hardened when they stuck the stones together with it, and so the walls of the little church had a solidity that no other buildings could match. And here, to prove it, so many lives later, still stood the church. Though outside the stone had weathered into an uneven grey, the mortar was as hard as ever. The place by the edge of the stream where the stones had been cut was still strewn with the chips, now grey and greened over by exposure to the water, and these, part blocking the stream, had spread it out so there was now a wide shallow stony area where women went to tread clothes or sheep-shearings in the slow-flowing water for washing.

Cleanliness was not a state that Marion was much aware of, and she barely recognized it as the special quality that always impressed her as she entered the church. The pale stone walls with seams of white mortar, the split beech-trunk beams which formed the roof, the wooden shutters hooked back from the windows each side and over the altar, gave the place a light, clean look that no other interior had. It was, of course, the only building, except sheds, that never had any fire to darken the walls or soot the beams. Though the Manor Hall was far larger and higher, it was dark and gloomy and never impressed Marion as did the airy lightness of the church, which became in her mind an attribute of religion.

Father John was fussing around the altar, trying to light two thin tallow candles from a bit of smoking twig, muttering to his boy assistant, Tim Rockwell, and making these mutterings inaudible by the frequent wiping of his nose on the back of his hand. Tim’s red bony hands seemed to project even further from his sleeves than they had last week, and the oozy chilblains were more numerous. By capping his hands round the candles and blowing gently on the smoking twig, he managed more successfully than Father John in lighting one and then the other. Their tiny flames could add nothing to the sharp winter sun shining in through the open windows and door. Father John still trotted to and fro, often tripping over his belt which had become untied and dangled before his feet.