trained himself to accept the emoluments
which poor Richard Vinnicomb had provided for a singing foundation, and
he was scrupulous in showing his disapproval of such vanities by
punctilious absence from the week-day service. This ceremony was
therefore entrusted to white-haired Mr Noot, whose zeal in his Master's
cause had left him so little opportunity for pushing his own interests
that at sixty he was stranded as an underpaid curate in the backwater of
Cullerne.

At four o'clock, therefore, on a week-day afternoon, anyone who happened
to be in Saint Sepulchre's Church might see a little surpliced
procession issue from the vestries in the south transept, and wind its
way towards the choir. It was headed by clerk Janaway, who carried a
silver-headed mace; then followed eight choristers (for the number fixed
by Richard Vinnicomb had been diminished by half); then five
singing-men, of whom the youngest was fifty, and the rear was brought up
by Mr Noot. The procession having once entered the choir, the clerk
shut the doors of the screen behind it, that the minds of the officiants
might be properly removed from contemplation of the outer world, and
that devotion might not be interrupted by any intrusion of profane
persons from the nave. These outside Profane existed rather in theory
than fact, for, except in the height of summer, visitors were rarely
seen in the nave or any other part of the building. Cullerne lay remote
from large centres, and archaeologic interest was at this time in so
languishing a condition that few, except professed antiquaries, were
aware of the grandeur of the abbey church. If strangers troubled little
about Cullerne, the interest of the inhabitants in the week-day service
was still more lukewarm, and the pews in front of the canopied stalls
remained constantly empty.

Thus, Mr Noot read, and Mr Sharnall the organist played, and the
choir-men and choristers sang, day by day, entirely for clerk Janaway's
benefit, because there was no one else to listen to them. Yet, if a
stranger given to music ever entered the church at such times, he was
struck with the service; for, like the Homeric housewife who did the
best with what she had by her, Mr Sharnall made the most of his
defective organ and inadequate choir. He was a man if much taste and
resource, and, as the echoes of the singing rolled round the vaulted
roofs, a generous critic thought little of cracked voices and leaky
bellows and rattli