How it opens
You were Arthur Vincent, Master of Arts, the son of a gentleman, and now, by your own deliberate choice, minister of Salem Chapel.
The choice had astonished your college friends, your clerical uncles, and your mother's family, in that order.
Mrs VincentIt is a small house, Arthur, but the garden is south, and the people look kind.
Choose
Read the gravestones, which are a parish's oldest minutes.
Try the chapel door, and find it locked, as every ministry's is at the start.
Stand in the lane and count the slates the deacons love and the town ignores.