of his during their grizzly _tete-a-tete_ among the black windows and
the mural tablets that overhung the aisle.

But the rector had lots to say--though deliberately and gravely, still
the voice was genial and inspiring--and exorcised the shadows that had
been gathering stealthily around the lesser Church functionaries. Mrs.
Irons's tooth, he learned, was still bad; but she was no longer troubled
with 'that sour humour in her stomach.' There were sour humours, alas!
still remaining--enough, and to spare, as the clerk knew to his cost.
Bob Martin thanked his reverence; the cold rheumatism in his hip was
better.' Irons, the clerk, replied, 'he had brought two prayer-books.'
Bob averred 'he could not be mistaken; the old lady was buried in the
near-vault; though it was forty years before, he remembered it like last
night. They changed her into her lead coffin in the vault--he and the
undertaker together--her own servants would not put a hand to her. She
was buried in white satin, and with her rings on her fingers. It was her
fancy, and so ordered in her will. They said she was mad. He'd know her
face again if he saw her. She had a long hooked nose; and her eyes were
open. For, as he was told, she died in her sleep, and was quite cold and
stiff when they found her in the morning. He went down and saw the
coffin to-day, half an hour after meeting his reverence.'

The rector consulted his great warming-pan of a watch. It was drawing
near eleven. He fell into a reverie, and rambled slowly up and down the
aisle, with his hands behind his back, and his dripping hat in them,
swinging nearly to the flags,--now lost in the darkness--now emerging
again, dim, nebulous, in the foggy light of the lanterns. When this
clerical portrait came near, he was looking down, with gathered brows,
upon the flags, moving his lips and nodding, as if counting them, as was
his way. The doctor was thinking all the time upon the one text:--Why
should this livid memorial of two great crimes be now disturbed, after
an obscurity of twenty-one years, as if to jog the memory of scandal,
and set the great throat of the monster baying once more at the old
midnight horror?

And as for that old house at Ballyfermot, why any one could have looked
after it as well as he. 'Still he must live somewhere, and certainly
this little town is quieter than the city, and the people, on the whole,
very kindly, and by no means curious.' This latter was a mistake of the
doct