On the following morning, he and Annot, and most of the young men and
women of the village walked over to St. Laud's to receive mass from
Father Jerome, and to hear the discourse which he had promised to give
respecting the duties of the people in the coming times.
The people, as in olden days, were crowded round the church about
half-past ten o'clock; but the doors of the church were closed. The
revolt in La Vendee had already gone far enough to prevent the
possibility of the constitutional priests officiating in the churches
to which they had been appointed by the National Assembly; but it had
not yet gone far enough to enable the old nonjuring Cures to resume
generally their own places in their own churches: the people, however,
now crowded round the church of St. Laud's, till they should learn where
on that day Father Jerome would perform mass.
The church of St. Laud's did not stand in any village, nor was it
surrounded even by a cluster of cottages. It stood by itself on the side
of a narrow little road, and was so completely surrounded by beech and
flowering ash trees, that a stranger would not know that he was in the
neighbourhood of a place of worship till it was immediately in front of
him.
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