A Laodicean

The sun blazed down and down till it was within half-an-hour of its setting; but the sketcher still lingered at his occupation of measuring and copying the chevroned doorway-a bold and quaint example of a transitional style of architecture which formed the tower entrance to an English village church. The graveyard being quite open on its western side the tweed-clad figure of the young draughtsman and the tall mass of antique masonry which rose above him to a battlemented parapet were fired to a great brightness by the solar rays that crossed the neighbouring mead like a warp of gold threads in whose mazes groups of equally lustrous gnats danced and wailed incessantly.