It was the twenty-second day of the month, and nearly a week after the date of the last chapter. Arthur Channing sat in his place at the cathedral organ, playing the psalm for the morning; for the hour was that of divine service.
“O give thanks unto the Lord, for He is gracious: and His mercy endureth for ever!”
The boy’s whole heart went up with the words.Hegave thanks: mercies had come upon him—upon his; and that great dread—which was turning his days to gall, his nights to sleeplessness—the arrest of Hamish, had not as yet been attempted. He felt it all as he sat there; and, in a softer voice, he echoed the sweet song of the choristers below, verse after verse as each verse rose on the air, filling the aisles of the old cathedral: how that God delivers those who cry unto Him—those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death; those whose hearts fail through heaviness, who fall down and there is none to help them—He brings them out of the darkness, and breaks their bonds in sunder. They that go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their business in great waters, who see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep; whose hearts cower at the stormy rising of the waves, and in their agony of distress cry unto Him to help them; and He hears the cry, and delivers them. He stills the angry waves, and calms the storm, and brings them into the haven where they would be; and then they are glad, because they are at rest.
“O that men would therefore praise the Lord for His goodness: and declare the wonders that He doeth for the children of men!
“And again, when they are minished, and brought low: through oppression, through any plague or trouble; though He suffer them to be evil intreated through tyrants: and let them wander out of the way in the wilderness; yet helpeth He the poor out of misery: and maketh him households like a flock of sheep.
“Whoso is wise will ponder these things: and they shall understand the loving-kindness of the Lord.”
The refrain died away, the gentle echo died after it, and silence fell upon the cathedral. It was broken by the voice of the Reverend William Yorke, giving out the first lesson—a chapter in Jeremiah.
At the conclusion of the service, Arthur Channing left the college. In the cloisters he was overtaken by the choristers, who were hastening back to the schoolroom. At the same moment Ketch, the porter, passed, coming towards them from the south entrance of the cloisters. He touched his hat in his usual ungracious fashion to the dean and Dr. Gardner, who were turning into the chapter-house, carrying their trenchers, and looked the other way as he passed the boys.
Arthur caught hold of Hurst. “Have you ‘served out’ old Ketch, as you threatened?” he laughingly asked.
“Hush!” whispered Hurst. “It has not come off yet. We had an idea that an inkling of it had got abroad, so we thought it best to keep quiet for a few nights, lest the Philistines should be on the watch. But the time is fixed now, and I can tell you that it is not a hundred nights off.”
With a shower of mysterious nods and winks, Hurst rushed away and bounded up the stairs to the schoolroom. Arthur returned to Mr. Galloway’s. “It’s the awfullest shame!” burst forth Tom Channing that day at dinner (and allow me to remark,par parenthèse, that, in reading about schoolboys, you must be content to accept their grammar as it comes); and he brought the handle of his knife down upon the table in a passion.
“Thomas!” uttered Mr. Channing, in amazed reproof.
“Well, papa, and so it is! and the school’s going pretty near mad over it!” returned Tom, turning his crimsoned face upon his father. “Would you believe that I and Huntley are to be passed over in the chance for the seniorship, and Yorke is to have it, without reference to merit?”
“No, I do not believe it, Tom,” quietly replied Mr. Channing. “But, even were it true, it is no reason why you should break out in that unseemly manner. Did you ever know a hot temper do good to its possessor?”
“I know I am hot-tempered,” confessed Tom. “I cannot help it, papa; it was born with me.”
“Many of our failings were born with us, my boy, as I have always understood. But they are to be subdued; not indulged.”
“Papa, you must acknowledge that it is a shame if Pye has promised the seniorship to Yorke, over my head and Huntley’s,” reiterated Tom, who was apt to speak as strongly as he thought. “If he gets the seniorship, the exhibition will follow; that is an understood thing. Would it be just?”
“Why are you saying this? What have you heard?”
“Well, it is a roundabout tale,” answered Tom. “But the rumour in the school is this—and if it turns out to be true, Gerald Yorke will about get eaten up alive.”
“Is that the rumour, Tom?” said Mrs. Channing.
Tom laughed, in spite of his anger. “I had not come to the rumour, mamma. Lady Augusta and Dr. Burrows are great friends, you know; and we hear that they have been salving over Pye—”
“Gently, Tom!” put in Mr. Channing.
“Talking over Pye, then,” corrected Tom, impatient to proceed with his story; “and Pye has promised to promote Gerald Yorke to the seniorship. He—”
“Dr. Burrows has gone away again,” interrupted Annabel. “I saw him go by to-day in his travelling carriage. Judy says he has gone to his rectory; some of the deanery servants told her so.”
“You’ll get something, Annabel, if you interrupt in that fashion,” cried Tom. “Last Monday, Dr. Burrows gave a dinner-party. Pye was there, and Lady Augusta was there; and it was then they got Pye to promise it to Yorke.”
“How is it known that they did?” asked Mr. Channing.
“The boys all say it, papa. It was circulating through the school this morning like wild-fire.”
“You will never take the prize for logic, Tom.Howdid the boys hear it, I ask?”
“Through Mr. Calcraft,” replied Tom.
“Tom!”
“Mr. Ketch, then,” said Tom, correcting himself as he had done before. “Both names are a mile too good for him. Ketch came into contact with some of the boys this morning before ten-o’clock school, and, of course, they went into a wordy war—which is nothing new. Huntley was the only senior present, and Ketch was insolent to him. One of the boys told Ketch that he would not dare to be so, next year, if Huntley should be senior boy. Ketch sneered at that, and said Huntley never would be senior boy, nor Channing either, for it was already given to Yorke. The boys took his words up, ridiculing the notion ofhisknowing anything of the matter, and they did not spare their taunts. That roused his temper, and the old fellow let out all he knew. He said Lady Augusta Yorke was at Galloway’s office yesterday, boasting about it before Jenkins.”
“A roundabout tale, indeed!” remarked Mr. Channing; “and told in a somewhat roundabout manner, Tom. I should not put faith in it. Did you hear anything of this, Arthur?”
“No, sir. I know that Lady Augusta called at the office yesterday afternoon while I was at college. I don’t know anything more.”
“Huntley intends to drop across Jenkins this afternoon, and question him,” resumed Tom Channing. “There can’t be any doubt that it was he who gave the information to Ketch. If Huntley finds that Lady Augusta did assert it, the school will take the affair up.”
The boast amused Hamish. “In what manner will the school be pleased to ‘take it up?’” questioned he. “Recommend the dean to hold Mr. Pye under surveillance? Or send Lady Augusta a challenge?”
Tom Channing nodded his head mysteriously. “There is many a true word spoken in jest, Hamish. I don’t know yet what we should do: we should do something. The school won’t stand it tamely. The day for that one-sided sort of oppression has gone out with our grandmothers’ fashions.”
“It would be very wrong of the school to stand it,” said Charley, throwing in his word. “If the honours are to go by sneaking favour, and not by merit, where is the use of any of us putting out our mettle?”
“You be quiet, Miss Charley! you juniors have nothing to do with it,” were all the thanks the boy received from Tom.
Now the facts really were very much as Tom Channing asserted; though whether, or how far, Mr. Pye had promised, and whether Lady Augusta’s boast had been a vain one, was a matter for speculation. Neither could it be surmised the part, if any, played in it by Prebendary Burrows. It was certain that Lady Augusta had, on the previous day, boasted to Mr. Galloway, in his office, that her son was to have the seniorship; that Mr. Pye had promised it to her and Dr. Burrows, at the dinner-party. She spoke of it without the least reserve, in a tone of much self-gratulation, and she laughingly told Jenkins, who was at his desk writing, that he might wish Gerald joy when he next saw him. Jenkins accepted it all as truth: it may be questioned if Mr. Galloway did, for he knew that Lady Augusta did not always weigh her words before speaking.
In the evening—this same evening, mind, after the call at the office of Lady Augusta—Mr. Jenkins proceeded towards home when he left his work. He took the road through the cloisters. As he was passing the porter’s lodge, who should he see in it but his father, old Jenkins, the bedesman, holding a gossip with Ketch; and they saw him.
“If that ain’t our Joe a-going past!” exclaimed the bedesman.
Joe stepped in. He was proceeding to join in the converse, when a lot of the college boys tore along, hooting and shouting, and kicking a ball about. It was kicked into the lodge, and a few compliments were thrown at the boys by the porter, before they could get the ball out again. These compliments, you may be quite sure, the boys did not fail to return with interest: Tom Channing, in particular, being charmingly polite.
“And the saucy young beast’ll be the senior boy soon!” foamed Mr. Ketch, as the lot decamped. “I wish I could get him gagged, I do!”
“No, he will not,” said Joe Jenkins, speaking impulsively in his superior knowledge. “Yorke is to be senior.”
“How do you know that, Joe?” asked his father.
Joe replied by relating what he had heard said by the Lady Augusta that afternoon. It did not conciliate the porter in the remotest degree: he was not more favourably inclined to Gerald Yorke than he was to Tom Channing. Had he heard the school never was to have a senior again, or a junior either, that might have pleased him.
But on the following morning, when he fell into dispute with the boys in the cloisters, he spoke out his information in a spirit of triumph over Huntley. Bit by bit, angered by the boys’ taunts, he repeated every word he had heard from Jenkins. The news, as it was busily circulated from one to the other, caused no slight hubbub in the school, and gave rise to that explosion of Tom Channing’s at the dinner-table.
Huntley sought Jenkins, as he had said he would do, and received confirmation of the report, so far as the man’s knowledge went. But Jenkins was terribly vexed that the report had got abroad through him. He determined to pay a visit to Mr. Ketch, and reproach him with his incaution.
Mr. Ketch sat in his lodge, taking his supper: bread and cheese, and a pint of ale procured at the nearest public-house. Except in the light months of summer, it was his habit to close the cloister gates before supper-time; but as Mr. Ketch liked to take that meal early—that is to say, at eight o’clock—and, as dusk, for at least four months in the year, obstinately persisted in putting itself off to a later hour, in spite of his growling, and as he might not shut up before dusk, he had no resource but to take his supper first and lock up afterwards. The “lodge” was a quaint abode, of one room only, built in an obscure nook of the cathedral, near the grand entrance. He was pursuing his meal after his own peculiar custom: eating, drinking, and grumbling.
“It’s worse nor leather, this cheese! Selling it to a body for double-Gloucester! I’d like to double them as made it. Eight-pence a pound!—and short weight beside! I wonder there ain’t a law passed to keep down the cost o’ provisions!”
A pause, given chiefly to grunting, and Mr. Ketch resumed:—
“This bread’s rougher nor a bear’s hide! Go and ask for new, and they palms you off with stale. They’ll put a loaf a week old into the oven to hot up again, and then sell it to you for new! There ought to be a criminal code passed for hanging bakers. They’re all cheats. They mixes up alum, and bone-dust, and plaster of Paris, and—Drat that door! Who’s kicking at it now?”
No one was kicking. Some one was civilly knocking. The door was pushed slightly open, and the inoffensive face of Mr. Joseph Jenkins appeared in the aperture.
“I say, Mr. Ketch,” began he in a mild tone of deprecation, “whatever is it that you have gone and done?”
“What d’ye mean?” growled old Ketch. “Is this a way to come and set upon a gentleman in his own house? Who taught you manners, Joe Jenkins?”
“You have been repeating what I mentioned last night about Lady Augusta’s son getting the seniorship,” said Jenkins, coming in and closing the door.
“You did say it,” retorted Mr. Ketch.
“I know I did. But I did not suppose you were going to repeat it again.”
“If it was a secret, why didn’t you say so?” asked Mr. Ketch.
“It was not exactly a secret, or Lady Augusta would not have mentioned it before me,” remonstrated Joe. “But it is not the proper thing, for me to come out of Mr. Galloway’s office, and talk of anything I may have heard said in it by his friends, and then for it to get round to his ears again! Put it to yourself, Mr. Ketch, and say whether you would like it.”
“Whatdidyou talk of it for, then?” snarled Ketch, preparing to take a copious draught of ale.
“Because I thought you and father were safe. You might both have known better than to speak of it out of doors. There is sure to be a commotion over it.”
“Miserable beer! Brewed out of ditch-water!”
“Young Mr. Huntley came to me to-day, to know the rights and the wrongs of it—as he said,” continued Joseph. “He spoke to Mr. Galloway about it afterwards—though I must say he was kind enough not to bring in my name; only said, in a general way, that he had ‘heard’ it. He is an honourable young gentleman, is that Huntley. He vows the report shall be conveyed to the dean.”
“Serve ‘em right!” snapped the porter. “If the dean does his duty, he’ll order a general flogging for the school, all round. It’ll do ‘em good.”
“Galloway did not say much—except that he knew what he should do, were he Huntley’s or Channing’s father. Which I took to mean that, in his opinion, there ought to be an inquiry instituted.”
“And you know there ought,” said Mr. Ketch.
“Iknow! I’m sure I don’t know,” was the mild answer. “It is not my place to reflect upon my superiors, Mr. Ketch—to say they should do this, or they should do that. I like to reverence them, and to keep a civil tongue in my head.”
“Which is what you don’t do. If I knowed who brewed this beer I’d enter an action again him, for putting in no malt.”
“I would not have had this get about for any money!” resumed Jenkins. “Neither you nor father shall ever catch me opening my lips again.”
“Keep ‘em shut then,” growled old Ketch.
Mr. Ketch leisurely finished his supper, and the two continued talking until dusk came on—almost dark; for the porter, churl though he was, liked a visitor as well as any one—possibly as a vent for his temper. He did not often find one who would stand it so meekly as Joe Jenkins. At length Mr. Jenkins lifted himself off the shut-up press bedstead on which he had been perched, and prepared to depart.
“Come along of me while I lock up,” said Ketch, somewhat less ungraciously than usual.
Mr. Jenkins hesitated. “My wife will be wondering what has become of me; she’ll blow me up for keeping supper waiting,” debated he, aloud. “But—well, I don’t mind going with you this once, for company’s sake,” he added in his willingness to be obliging.
The two large keys, one at each end of a string, were hung up just within the lodge door; they belonged to the two gates of the cloisters. Old Ketch took them down and went out with Jenkins, merely closing his own door; he rarely fastened it, unless he was going some distance.
Very dark were the enclosed cloisters, as they entered by the west gate. It was later than the usual hour of closing, and it was, moreover, a gloomy evening, the sky overcast. They went through the cloisters to the south gate, Ketch grumbling all the way. He locked it, and then turned back again.
Arrived about midway of the west quadrangle, the very darkest part in all the cloisters, and the most dreary, Jenkins suddenly startled his companion by declaring there was a light in the burial-ground.
“Come along!” growled Ketch. “You’ll say there’s corpse-candles there next.”
“It is only a little spark, like,” said Jenkins, halting. “I should not wonder but it is one of those pretty, innocent glowworms.”
He leaned his arms upon the mullioned frame of the open Gothic window, raised himself on tiptoe to obtain as complete a view as was possible, and pushed his head out to reconnoitre the grave-yard. Mr. Ketch shuffled on; the keys, held somewhat loosely in his hand by the string, clanking together.
“Be you going to stop there all night?” he called out, when he had gone a few paces, half turning round to speak.
At that moment a somewhat startling incident occurred. The keys were whisked out of Mr. Ketch’s hand, and fell, or appeared to fall, with a clatter on the flags at his feet. He turned his anger upon Jenkins.
“Now then, you senseless calf! What did you do that for?”
“Did you speak?” asked Jenkins, taking his elbows from the distant window-frame, and approaching.
Mr. Ketch felt a little staggered. His belief had been that Jenkins had come up silently, and dashed the keys from his hand; but Jenkins, it appeared, had not left the window. However, like too many other cross-grained spirits, he persisted in venting blame upon him.
“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, to play an old man such a trick?”
“I have played no trick,” said Jenkins. “I thought I saw a glowworm, and I stopped to look; but I couldn’t see it again. There’s no trick in that.”
“Ugh!” cried the porter in his wrath. “You took and clutched the keys from me, and throwed ‘em on the ground! Pick ‘em up.”
“Well, I never heard the like!” said Jenkins. “I was not within yards and yards of you. If you dropped the keys it was no fault of mine.” But, being a peaceably-inclined man, he stooped and found the keys.
The porter grunted. An inner current of conviction rose in his heart that he must undoubtedly have dropped them, though he could have declared at the time that they were mysteriously snatched from him. He seized the string firmly now, and hobbled on to the west door, abusing Jenkins all the way.
They arrived at the west door, which was gained by a narrow closed passage from the gate of entrance, as was the south door in a similar manner; and there Mr. Ketch used his eyes and his tongue considerably, for the door, instead of being open, as he had left it, was shut and locked.
“What on earth has done this?” shrieked he.
“Done what?” asked Mr. Jenkins.
“Done what!” was the irascible echo. “Be you a fool, Joe Jenkins? Don’t you see the door’s fast!”
“Unfasten it,” said Jenkins sensibly.
Mr. Ketch proceeded to do so—at least to apply one of the keys to the lock—with much fumbling. It apparently did not occur to him to wonder how the locking-up process could have been effected, considering that the key had been in his own possession.
Fumbling and fumbling, now with one key, now with the other, and then critically feeling the keys and their wards, the truth at length burst upon the unhappy man that the keys were not the right keys, and that he and Jenkins were—locked in! A profuse perspiration broke out over him.
“Theymustbe the keys,” remonstrated Mr. Jenkins.
“They arenotthe keys,” shrieked Ketch. “D’ye think I don’t know my own keys, now I come to feel ‘em?”
“But they were your keys that fell down and that I picked up,” argued Jenkins, perfectly sure in his own mind that they could be no others. “There was not a fairy in the cloisters to come and change them.”
“Feel ‘em!” roared Ketch, in his despair. “These be a couple of horrid, rusty old things, that can’t have been in use since the cloisters was built.Youhave changed ‘em, you have!” he sobbed, the notion taking possession of him forcibly. “You are a-doing it to play me a infamous trick, and I’ll have you up before the dean to-morrow! I’ll shake the life out of you, I will!”
Laying summary hold of Mr. Jenkins, he began to shake him with all his feeble strength. The latter soon extricated himself, and he succeeded in impressing on the man the fallacy of his suspicion. “Don’t I want to get home to my supper and my wife? Don’t I tell you that she’ll set upon me like anything for keeping it waiting?” he meekly remonstrated. “Do I want to be locked up in these unpleasant cloisters? Give me the keys and let me try them.”
Ketch, in sheer helplessness, was fain to comply. He resigned the keys to Jenkins, and Jenkins tried them: but he was none the nearer unlocking the gate. In their increasing perplexity, they resolved to return to the place in the quadrangle where the keys had fallen—a very forlorn suggestion proceeding from Mr. Jenkins that the right keys might be lying there still, and that this rusty pair might, by some curious and unaccountable chance, have been lying there also.
They commenced their search, disputing, the one hotly, the other temperately, as to which was the exact spot. With feet and hands they hunted as well as the dark would allow them; all in vain; and Ketch gave vent to a loud burst of feeling when he realized the fact that they were positively locked up in the cloisters, beyond hope of succour, in the dark and lonely night.
“Fordham, I wonder whether the cloisters are closed?”
“I will see, my lord.”
The question came from the Bishop of Helstonleigh; who, as it fell out, had been to make an evening call upon the dean. The dean’s servant was now conducting his lordship down the grand staircase, on his departure. In proceeding to the palace from the deanery, to go through the cloisters cut off quite two-thirds of the distance.
Fordham left the hall, a lamp in his hand, and traversed sundry passages which brought him to the deanery garden. Crossing the garden, and treading another short passage, he came to the cloisters. The bishop had followed, lighted by Fordham, and talking affably. A very pleasant man was the Bishop of Helstonleigh, standing little upon forms and ceremonies. In frame he was nearly as active as a college boy.
“It is all right, I think, my lord,” said Fordham. “I hear the porter’s voice now in the cloisters.”
“How dark it is!” exclaimed the bishop. “Ketch must be closing late to-night. What a noise he is making!”
In point of fact, Mr. Ketch had just arrived at that agreeable moment which concluded the last chapter—the conviction that no other keys were to be found, and that he and Jenkins were fast. The tone in which he was making his sentiments known upon the calamity, was not a subdued one.
“Shall I light you round, my lord?”
“By no means—by no means. I shall be up with Ketch in a minute. He seems in a temper. Good night, Fordham.”
“Good night to your lordship.”
The servant went back to the deanery. The prelate groped his way round to the west quadrangle.
“Are you closing, Ketch?”
Mr. Ketch started as if he had been shot, and his noise dropped to a calm. Truth to say, his style of complaint had not been orthodox, or exactly suitable to the ears of his bishop. He and Jenkins both recognized the voice, and bowed low, dark though it was.
“What is the matter, Ketch? You are making enough noise.”
“Matter, my lord!” groaned Ketch. “Here’s matter enough to make a saint—saving your lordship’s presence—forget his prayers. We be locked up in the cloisters.”
“Locked up!” repeated the bishop. “What do you mean? Who is with you?”
“It is me, my lord,” said Jenkins, meekly, answering for himself. “Joseph Jenkins, my lord, at Mr. Galloway’s. I came in with the porter just for company, my lord, when he came to lock up, and we have somehow got locked in.”
The bishop demanded an explanation. It was not very easily afforded. Ketch and Jenkins talked one against the other, and when the bishop did at length understand the tale, he scarcely gave credence to it.
“It is an incomprehensible story, Ketch, that you should drop your keys, and they should be changed for others as they lay on the flags. Are you sure you brought out the right keys?”
“My lord, Icouldn’tbring out any others,” returned Ketch, in a tone that longed to betray its resentment, and would have betrayed it to any one but a bishop. “I haven’t no others to bring, my lord. The two keys hang up on the nail always, and there ain’t another key besides in the house, except the door key.”
“Some one must have changed them previously—must have hung up these in their places,” remarked the bishop.
“But, my lord, it couldn’t be, I say,” reiterated old Ketch, almost shrieking. “I know the keys just as well as I know my own hands, and they was the right keys that I brought out. The best proof, my lord, is, that I locked the south door fast enough; and how could I have done that with these wretched old rusty things?”
“The keys must be on the flags still,” said his lordship.
“That is the only conclusion I can come to, my lord,” mildly put in Jenkins. “But we cannot find them.”
“And meanwhile we are locked in for the night, and here’s his right reverend lordship, the bishop, locked in with us!” danced old Ketch, almost beside himself with anger. “Of course, it wouldn’t matter for me and Jenkins: speaking in comparison, we are nobody; but it is a shameful indignity for my lord.”
“We must try and get out, Ketch,” said his lordship, in a tone that sounded as if he were more inclined to laugh than cry. “I will go back to the deanery.”
Away went the bishop as quickly as the gloom allowed him, and away went the other two in his wake. Arrived at the passage which led from the cloisters to the deanery garden they groped their way to the end—only to find the door closed and locked.
“Well, this is a pleasant situation!” exclaimed the bishop, his tone betraying amusement as well as annoyance; and with his own prelatical hands he pummelled at the door, and shouted with his own prelatical voice. When the bishop was tired, Jenkins and Ketch began to pummel and to shout, and they pummelled and shouted till their knuckles were sore and their throats were hoarse. It was all in vain. The garden intervened between them and the deanery, and they could not be heard.
It certainly was a pretty situation, as the prelate remarked. The Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Helstonleigh, ranking about fifth, by precedence, on the episcopal bench, locked up ignominiously in the cloisters of Helstonleigh, with Ketch the porter, and Jenkins the steward’s clerk; likely, so far as appearances might be trusted, to have to pass the night there! The like had never yet been heard of.
The bishop went to the south gate, and tried the keys himself: the bishop went to the west gate and tried them there; the bishop stamped about the west quadrangle, hoping to stamp upon the missing keys; but nothing came of it. Ketch and Jenkins attended him—Ketch grumbling in the most angry terms that he dared, Jenkins in humble silence.
“I really do not see what is to be done,” debated the bishop, who, no doubt, wished himself well out of the dilemma, as any less exalted mortal would have done, “The doors leading into the college are sure to be closed.”
“Quite sure,” groaned Ketch.
“And to get into the college would not serve us, that I see,” added the bishop. “We should be no better off there than here.”
“Saving that we might ring the bell, my lord,” suggested Jenkins, with deference.
They proceeded to the college gates. It was a forlorn hope, and one that did not serve them. The gates were locked, the doors closed behind them. No reaching the bell that way; it might as well have been a hundred miles off.
They traversed the cloisters again, and tried the door of the schoolroom. It was locked. Had it not been, the senior boy might have expected punishment from the head-master. They tried the small door leading into the residence of Dr. Burrows—fast also; that abode just now was empty. The folding doors of the chapter-house were opened easily, and they entered. But what did it avail them? There was the large, round room, lined with its books, furnished with its immense table and easy-chairs; but it was as much shut in from the hearing of the outside world as they were. The bishop came into contact with a chair, and sat down in it. Jenkins, who, as clerk to Mr. Galloway, the steward to the dean and chapter, was familiar with the chapter-house, felt his way to the spot where he knew matches were sometimes kept. He could not find any: it was the time of light evenings.
“There’s just one chance, my lord,” suggested Jenkins. “That the little unused door at the corner of the cloisters, leading into the body of the cathedral, may not be locked.”
“Precious careless of the sextons, if it is not!” grunted Ketch.
“It is a door nobody ever thinks of going in at, my lord,” returned Jenkins, as if he would apologize for the sextons’ carelessness, should it be found unfastened. “If it is open, we might get to the bell.”
“The sextons, proud, stuck-up gentlemen, be made up of carelessness and anything else that’s bad!” groaned Ketch. “Holding up their heads above us porters!”
It was worth the trial. The bishop rose from the chair, and groped his way out of the chapter-house, the two others following.
“If it hadn’t been for that Jenkins’s folly, fancying he saw a light in the burying-ground, and me turning round to order him to come on, it might not have happened,” grumbled Ketch, as they wound round the cloisters.
“A light in the burial-ground!” hastily repeated the bishop. “What light?”
“Oh, a corpse-candle, or some nonsense of that sort, he had his mind running on, my lord. Half the world is idiots, and Jenkins is the biggest of ‘em.”
“My lord,” spoke poor Jenkins, deprecatingly, “I never had such a thought within me as that it was a ‘corpse-candle.’ I said I fancied it might be a glowworm. And I believe it was one, my lord.”
“A more sensible thought than the other,” observed the prelate.
Luck at last! The door was found to be unlocked. It was a low narrow door, only used on the very rare occasion of a funeral, and was situated in a shady, out-of-the-way nook, where no one ever thought of looking. “Oh, come, this is something!” cried the bishop, cheerily, as he stepped into the cathedral.
“And your lordship now sees what fine careless sextons we have got!” struck in Ketch.
“We must overlook their carelessness this time, in consideration of the service it renders us,” said the bishop, in a kindly tone. “Take care of the pillars, Ketch.”
“Thank ye, my lord. I’m going along with my hands held out before me, to save my head,” returned Ketch.
Most likely the bishop and Jenkins were doing the same. Dexterously steering clear of the pillars, they emerged in the wide, open body of the cathedral, and bent their steps across it to the spot where hung the ropes of the bells.
The head sexton to the cathedral—whom you must not confound with a gravedigger, as you might an ordinary sexton; cathedral sextons are personages of more importance—was seated about this hour at supper in his home, close to the cathedral. Suddenly the deep-toned college bell boomed out, and the man started as if a gun had been fired at him.
“Why, that’s the college bell!” he uttered to his family. And the family stared with open mouths without replying.
The college bell it certainly was, and it was striking out sharp irregular strokes, as though the ringer were not accustomed to his work. The sexton started up, in a state of the most amazed consternation.
“It is magic; it is nothing less—that the bell should be ringing out at this hour!” exclaimed he.
“Father,” suggested a juvenile, “perhaps somebody’s got locked up in the college.” For which prevision he was rewarded with a stinging smack on the head.
“Take that, sir! D’ye think I don’t know better than to lock folks up in the college? It was me, myself, as locked up this evening.”
“No need to box him for that,” resented the wife. “The bellisringing, and I’ll be bound the boy’s right enough. One of them masons must have fallen asleep in the day, and has just woke up to find himself shut in. Hope he likes his berth!”
Whatever it might be, ringing the bell, whether magic or mason, of course it must be seen to; and the sexton hastened out, the cathedral keys in his hand. He bent his steps towards the front entrance, passing the cloisters, which, as he knew, would be locked at that hour. “And that bear of a Ketch won’t hurry himself to unlock them,” soliloquized he.
He found the front gates surrounded. The bell had struck upon the wondering ears of many living within the precincts of the cathedral, who flocked out to ascertain the reason. Amongst others, the college boys were coming up in troops.
“Now, good people, please—by your leave!” cried the sexton. “Let me get to the gates.”
They made way for the man and his ponderous keys, and entrance to the college was gained. The sexton was beginning a sharp reproof to the “mason,” and the crowd preparing a chorus to it, when they were seized with consternation, and fell back on each other’s toes. It was the Bishop of Helstonleigh, in his laced-up hat and apron, who walked forth.
The sexton humbly snatched off his hat; the college boys raised their trenchers.
“Thank you all for coming to the rescue,” said the bishop, in a pleasant tone. “It was not an agreeable situation, to be locked in the cathedral.”
“My lord,” stammered the sexton, in awe-struck dread, as to whether he had unwittingly been the culprit: “how did your lordship get locked in?”
“That is what we must inquire into,” replied the bishop.
The next to hobble out was Ketch. In his own fashion, almost ignoring the presence of the bishop, he made known the tale. It was received with ridicule. The college boys especially cast mockery upon it, and began dancing a jig when the bishop’s back was turned. “Let a couple of keys drop down, and, when picked up, you found them transmogrified into old rusty machines, made in the year one!” cried Bywater. “That’svery like a whale, Ketch!”
Ketch tore off to his lodge, as fast as his lumbago allowed him, calling upon the crowd to come and look at the nail where the keys always hung, except when in use, and holding out the rusty dissemblers for public view, in a furious passion.
He dashed open the door. The college boys, pushing before the crowd, and following on the bishop’s heels—who had probably his own reasons for wishing to see the solution of the affair—thronged into the lodge. “There’s the nail, my lord, and there—”
Ketch stopped, dumbfounded. On the nail, hanging by the string, as quietly as if they had hung for ages, were the cloister keys. Ketch rubbed his eyes, and stared, and rubbed again. The bishop smiled.
“I told you, Ketch, I thought you must be mistaken, in supposing you brought the proper keys out.”
Ketch burst into a wail of anger and deprecation. He had took out the right keys, and Jenkins could bear him out in the assertion. Some wicked trick had been played upon him, and the keys brought back during his absence and hung up on their hook! He’d lay his life it was the college boys!
The bishop turned his eyes on those young gentlemen. But nothing could be more innocent than their countenances, as they stood before him in their trenchers. Rather too innocent, perhaps: and the bishop’s eyes twinkled, and a half-smile crossed his lips; but he made no sign. Well would it be if all the clergy were as sweet-tempered as that Bishop of Helstonleigh!
“Well, Ketch, take care of your keys for the future,” was all he said, as he walked away. “Good night, boys.”
“Good night to your lordship,” replied the boys, once more raising their trenchers; and the crowd, outside, respectfully saluted their prelate, who returned it in kind.
“What are you waiting for, Thorpe?” the bishop demanded, when he found the sexton was still at the great gates, holding them about an inch open.
“For Jenkins, my lord,” was the reply. “Ketch said he was also locked in.”
“Certainly he was,” replied the bishop. “Has he not come forth?”
“That he has not, my lord. I have let nobody whatever out except your lordship and the porter. I have called out to him, but he does not answer, and does not come.”
“He went up into the organ-loft in search of a candle and matches,” remarked the bishop. “You had better go after him, Thorpe. He may not know that the doors are open.”
The bishop left, crossing over to the palace. Thorpe, calling one of the old bedesmen, some of whom had then come up, left him in charge of the gate, and did as he was ordered. He descended the steps, passed through the wide doors, and groped his way in the dark towards the choir.
“Jenkins!”
There was no answer.
“Jenkins!” he called out again.
Still there was no answer: except the sound of the sexton’s own voice as it echoed in the silence of the large edifice.
“Well, this is an odd go!” exclaimed Thorpe, as he leaned against a pillar and surveyed the darkness of the cathedral. “He can’t have melted away into a ghost, or dropped down into the crypt among the coffins. Jenkins, I say!”
With a word of impatience at the continued silence, the sexton returned to the entrance gates. All that could be done was to get a light and search for him.
They procured a lantern, Ketch ungraciously supplying it; and the sexton, taking two or three of the spectators with him, proceeded to the search. “He has gone to sleep in the organ-loft, that is what he has done,” cried Thorpe, making known what the bishop had said.
Alas! Jenkins had not gone to sleep. At the foot of the steps, leading to the organ-loft, they came upon him. He was lying there insensible, blood oozing from a wound in the forehead. How had it come about? What had caused it?
Meanwhile, the college boys, after driving Mr. Ketch nearly wild with their jokes and ridicule touching the mystery of the keys, were scared by the sudden appearance of the head-master. They decamped as fast as their legs could carry them, bringing themselves to an anchor at a safe distance, under shade of the friendly elm trees. Bywater stuck his back against one, and his laughter came forth in peals. Some of the rest tried to stop it, whispering caution.
“It’s of no good talking, you fellows! I can’t keep it in; I shall burst if I try. I have been at bursting point ever since I twitched the keys out of his hands in the cloisters, and threw the rusty ones down. You see I was right—that it was best for one of us to go in without our boots, and to wait. If half a dozen had gone, we should never have got away unheard.”
“Ipretty nearly burst when I saw the bishop come out, instead of Ketch,” cried Tod Yorke. “Burst with fright.”
“So did a few more of us,” said Galloway. “I say, will there be a row?”
“Goodness knows! He is a kind old chap is the bishop. Better for it to have been him than the dean.”
“What was it Ketch said, about Jenkins seeing a glowworm?”
“Oh!” shrieked Bywater, holding his sides, “that was the best of all! I had taken a lucifer out of my pocket, playing with it, while they went round to the south gate, and it suddenly struck fire. I threw it over to the burial-ground: and that soft Jenkins took it for a glowworm.”
“It’s a stunning go!” emphatically concluded Mr. Tod Yorke. “The best we have had this half, yet.”
“Hush—sh—sh—sh!” whispered the boys under their breath. “There goes the master.”