A tuft of primroses was blooming hard by the leg of an old black table tombstone, and he stopped to contemplate the random apologue.

They stood forth on the cold earth with a trenchancy of contrast; and he was struck with a sense of incompleteness in the day, the season, and the beauty that surrounded him--the chill there was in the warmth, the gross black clods about the opening primroses, the damp earthy smell that was everywhere intermingled with the scents.

The voice of the aged Torrance within rose in an ecstasy.

And he wondered if Torrance also felt in his old bones the joyous influence of the spring morning; Torrance, or the shadow of what once was Torrance, that must come so soon to lie outside here in the sun and rain with all his rheumatisms, while a new minister stood in his room and thundered from his own familiar pulpit?
The pity of it, and something of the chill of the grave, shook him for a moment as he made haste to enter.
He went up the aisle reverently, and took his place in the pew with lowered eyes, for he feared he had already offended the kind old gentleman in the pulpit, and was sedulous to offend no further.

He could not follow the prayer, not even the heads of it.