Martin, having known the taste of excitement, wanted a second ; having felt the dignity of power, he to it. Miss Helstone—that girl he had always called ugly, and whose face was now perpetually before his eyes, by day and by night, in dark and in sunshine—had once come within his sphere. It him to think the visit might never be repeated.  
Though a schoolboy he was no ordinary schoolboy; he was to grow up an original. At a few years' later date he took great pains to pare and polish himself down to the pattern of the rest of the world, but he never succeeded; an unique stamp marked him always. He now sat idle at his desk in the grammar school, casting about in his mind for the means of adding another chapter to his commenced romance. He did not yet know how many commenced life-romances are never to get beyond the first, or at most the second chapter. His Saturday half-holiday he spent in the wood with his book of fairy legends, and that other unwritten book of his imagination.
 
Martin harboured an irreligious to see the approach of Sunday. His father and mother, while community with the Establishment, failed not duly, once on the sacred day, to fill their large pew in Briarfield Church with the whole of their blooming family. Theoretically, Mr. Yorke placed all and churches on a level. Mrs. Yorke awarded the palm to Moravians and Quakers, on account of that crown of by these worn. Neither of them were ever known, however, to set foot in a conventicle.
 
Martin, I say, disliked Sunday, because the morning service was long, and the sermon usually little to his taste.514 This Saturday afternoon, however, his woodland musings disclosed to him a new-found charm in the coming day.
 
It proved a day of deep snow—so deep that Mrs. Yorke during breakfast announced her conviction that the children, both boys and girls, would be better at home; and her decision that, instead of going to church, they should sit silent for two hours in the back parlour, while Rose and Martin alternately read a succession of sermons—John Wesley's "Sermons." John Wesley, being a reformer and an , had a place both in her own and her husband's favour.
 
"Rose will do as she pleases," said Martin, not looking up from the book which, according to his custom then and in after-life, he was studying over his bread and milk.
 
"Rose will do as she is told, and Martin too," observed the mother.
 
"I am going to church."
 
So her son replied, with the quietude of a true Yorke, who knows his will and means to have it, and who, if pushed to the wall, will let himself be crushed to death, provided no way of escape can be found, but will never capitulate.
 
"It is not fit weather," said the father.
 
No answer. The youth read studiously; he slowly broke his bread and his milk.
 
"Martin hates to go to church, but he hates still more to obey," said Mrs. Yorke.
 
"I suppose I am influenced by pure ?"
 
"Yes, you are."
 
"Mother, I am not."
 
"By what, then, are you influenced?"
 
"By a complication of , the intricacies of which I should as soon think of explaining to you as I should of turning myself inside out to exhibit the internal of my frame."
 
"Hear Martin! hear him!" cried Mr. Yorke. "I must see and have this lad of mine brought up to the bar. Nature meant him to live by his tongue. Hesther, your third son must certainly be a lawyer; he has the stock-in-trade—brass, self-conceit, and words—words—words."
 
"Some bread, Rose, if you please," requested Martin, with intense gravity, , phlegm. The boy had naturally a low, voice, which in his " moods" rose scarcely above a lady's whisper. The more inflexibly515 stubborn the humour, the softer, the sadder the tone. He rang the bell, and gently asked for his walking-shoes.
 
"But, Martin," urged his sire, "there is drift all the way; a man could hardly through it. However, lad," he continued, seeing that the boy rose as the church bell began to , "this is a case wherein I would by no means the chap of his will. Go to church by all means. There is a pitiless wind, and a sharp, frozen , besides the depth under foot. Go out into it, since thou prefers it to a warm fireside."
 
Martin quietly assumed his cloak, comforter, and cap, and went out.
 
"My father has more sense than my mother," he pronounced. "How women miss it! They drive the nail into the flesh, thinking they are hammering away at insensate stone."
 
He reached church early.
 
"Now, if the weather frightens her (and it is a real December tempest), or if that Mrs. Pryor objects to her going out, and I should miss her after all, it will me; but, tempest or , hail or ice, she ought to come, and if she has a mind of her eyes and features she will come. She will be here for the chance of seeing me, as I am here for the chance of seeing her. She will want to get a word respecting her confounded sweetheart, as I want to get another flavour of what I think the essence of life—a taste of existence, with the spirit preserved in it, and not evaporated. Adventure is to what is to flat porter."
 
He looked round. The church was cold, silent, empty, but for one old woman. As the chimes and the single bell slowly, another and another elderly parishioner came dropping in, and took a station in the free sittings. It is always the , the oldest, and the poorest that brave the worst weather, to prove and maintain their constancy to dear old mother church. This wild morning not one family attended, not one carriage party appeared—all the lined and cushioned pews were empty; only on the bare oaken seats sat ranged the gray-haired elders and feeble .
 
"I'll scorn her if she doesn't come," muttered Martin, shortly and , to himself. The rector's shovel-hat had passed the porch. Mr. Helstone and his clerk were in the vestry.
 
516The bells ceased—the reading-desk was filled—the doors were closed—the service commenced. Void stood the rectory pew—she was not there. Martin scorned her.
 
"Worthless thing! thing! commonplace ! Like all other girls—weakly, selfish, shallow!"
 
Such was Martin's .
 
"She is not like our picture. Her eyes are not large and ; her nose is not straight, delicate, Hellenic; her mouth has not that charm I thought it had, which I imagined could me of in my worst moods. What is she? A thread-paper, a doll, a toy, a girl, in short."
 
So absorbed was the young cynic he forgot to rise from his knees at the proper place, and was still in an exemplary attitude of devotion when, the litany over, the first was given out. To be so caught did not contribute to him. He started up red (for he was as sensitive to as any girl). To make the matter worse, the church door had reopened, and the were filling: patter, patter, patter, a hundred little feet in. It was the Sunday scholars. According to Briarfield winter custom, these children had till now been kept where there was a warm stove, and only led into church just before the communion and sermon.
 
The little ones were settled first, and at last, when the boys and the younger girls were all arranged—when the organ was high, and the and congregation were rising to uplift a spiritual song—a tall class of............