"For all the saints who from their labours rest," chanted the choir softly, the music of their voices mingling strangely with the shouts of the children at play which rose up from the beach below.
"He looks as though he were resting," thought Isobel; "not dead--only just sleeping until he was wanted again. I suppose he's one of the 'saints in light' now. What a long, long time it is since he lived here! I wonder if he knows they built a church and called it St. Alcuin's after him."
"Here's the verger coming," whispered Belle, pulling at her hand. "I think we'd better go."
"Let us sit down; shall we?" said Isobel, when they were out in the glare of the sunshine once more on the broad flagged path which led from the church door to the steps looking down on to the sea.
"Not here, though," replied Belle; "I don't like gravestones--they make me feel horrid and creepy."
"Under the lich-gate, then," suggested Isobel. "It'll be cooler, for it's in the shade, and there's a seat, too."
"What a simply broiling day!" said Belle, settling herself as luxuriously as possible in the corner, and pulling off her hat to fan her hot face. "I don't like such heat as this; it takes my hair out of curl," tenderly twisting one of her flaxen ringlets into its proper orthodox droop.
"It's jolly here. We get a little wind, and we can watch everything all round," said Isobel, sitting with her chin in her hands, and gazing over the water to where the herring fleet was tacking back to the harbour.
The children could scarcely have chosen a sweeter spot to rest. Below them lay the sea, a broad flat expanse of blue, getting a little hazy gray on the horizon, and with a greenish ripple where it neared the rocks, upon which its waves were always dashing with a dull, booming sound.
The old town, with its red roofs and poppy-filled gardens, made such a spot of brightness against the blue sea that it suggested the brilliant colouring of a foreign port, all the more so in contrast to the gray tower of the church behind and the wind-swept yew trees which had somehow managed to survive the winter storms. The grass had been mown in the churchyard, and filled the air with a fragrant scent of hay; a big bumble-bee buzzed noisily over a bed of wild thyme under the wall, and a swallow was feeding a row of young ones upon the ridged roof of the sexton's cottage. In the great stretch of blue above, the little fleecy clouds formed themselves into snowy mountains with valleys and lakes between, a kind of dream country in purest white, and Isobel wondered whether, if one could sail straight on to the very verge of the distance where sea and sky seemed to meet, one could slip altogether over the invisible line that bounds the horizon, and find oneself floating in that cloudland region.