rcle, or found the missing bit to fit into the puzzle; but he kept his
schemes very dark. He left boxes full of papers behind him when he
died, and Miss Joliffe handed them to me to look over, instead of
burning them. I shall go through them some day; but no doubt the whole
thing is moonshine, and if he ever had a clue it died with him."

There was a little pause; the chimes of Saint Sepulchre's played "Mount
Ephraim," and the great bell tolled out midnight over Cullerne Flat.

"It's time to be turning in. You haven't a drop of whisky, I suppose?"
he said, with a glance at the kettle which stood on a trivet in front of
the fire; "I have talked myself thirsty."

There was a pathos in his appeal that would have melted many a stony
heart, but Westray's principles were unassailable, and he remained
obdurate.

"No, I am afraid I have not," he said; "you see, I never take spirits
myself. Will you not join me in a cup of cocoa? The kettle boils."

Mr Sharnall's face fell.

"You ought to have been an old woman," he said; "only old women drink
cocoa. Well, I don't mind if I do; any port in a storm."

The organist went to bed that night in a state of exemplary sobriety,
for when he got down to his own room he could find no spirit in the
cupboard, and remembered that he had finished the last bottle of old
Martelet's _eau-de-vie_ at his tea, and that he had no money to buy
another.

CHAPTER SIX.

A month later the restoration work at Saint Sepulchre's was fairly
begun, and in the south transept a wooden platform had been raised on
scaffold-poles to such a height as allowed the masons to work at the
vault from the inside. This roof was no doubt the portion of the fabric
that called most urgently for repair, but Westray could not disguise
from himself that delay might prove dangerous in other directions, and
he drew Sir George Farquhar's attention to more than one weak spot which
had escaped the great architect's cursory inspection.

But behind all Westray's anxieties lurked that dark misgiving as to the
tower arches, and in his fancy the enormous weight of the central tower
brooded like the incubus over the whole building. Sir George Farquhar
paid sufficient attention to his deputy's representations to visit
Cullerne with a special view to examining the tower. He spent an autumn
day in making measurements and calculations, he listened to the story of
the interrupted peal, and probed the cracks in the walls, b