For a moment the minister stood before the seat, as if doubtful what to do.  He held the plate in his left hand and a fragment of bread in his fingers.  Then, as he began the words he had to say, one thing at least the people saw, and that was that a great flush dyed the old man’s face, though he sat quiet.  Then, as the minister held out the bread, the squire seemed to recover himself; he put out his fingers quickly, took the bread sharply and put it into his mouth; and so sat again, until the minister brought the cup; and this, too, he drank of quickly, and gave it back.

Then, as the communicants, one by one, took the bread and wine and went back to their seats, man after man glanced up at the squire.

But the squire sat there, motionless and upright, like a figure cut of stone.

IV

The court of the manor seemed deserted half an hour before dinner-time.  There was a Sabbath stillness in the air to-day, sweetened, as it were, by the bubbling of bird-music in the pleasaunce behind the hall and the high woods beyond.  On the strips of rough turf before the gate and within it bloomed the spring flowers, white and blue.  A hound lay stretched in the sunshine on the hall steps; twitching his ears to keep off a persistent fly.  You would have sworn that his was the only intelligence in the place.  Yet at the sound of the iron latch of the gate and the squire’s footsteps on the stones, the place, so to say, became alive, though in a furtive and secret manner.  Over the half door of the stable entrance on the left two faces appeared—­one, which was Dick’s, sullen and angry, the other, that of a stable-boy, inquiring and frankly interested.  This second vanished again as the squire came forward.  A figure of a kitchen-boy, in a white apron, showed in the dark doorway that led to the kitchen and hall, and disappeared again instantly.  From two or three upper windows faces peeped and remained fascinated.  Only the old hound remained still, twitching his ears.

All this—­though there was nothing to be seen but the familiar personage of the place, in his hat and cloak and sword, walking through his own court on his way to dinner, as he had walked a thousand times before.  And yet so great was the significance of his coming to-day, that the very gate behind him was pushed open by sightseers, who had followed at a safe distance up the path from the church; half a dozen stood there staring, and behind them, at intervals, a score more, spread out in groups, all the way down to the porter’s lodge.

The most remarkable feature of all was the silence.  Not a voice there spoke, even in a whisper.  The maids at the windows above, Dick glowering over the half door, the little group which, far back in the kitchen entrance, peeped and rustled, the men at the gate behind, even the boys in the path—­all these held their tongues for interest and a kind of fear.  Drama was in the air—­the tragedy of seeing the squire come back from church for the first time, bearing himself as he always did, resolute and sturdy, yet changed in his significance after a fashion of which none of these simple hearts had ever dreamed.