ismal morning, as Dangerfield's energetic step carried him briskly
through the town, the iron gate of the church-yard, and the door of the
church itself standing open, he turned in, glancing upward as he passed
at Sturk's bed-room windows, as all the neighbours did, to see whether
General Death's white banners were floating there, and his tedious siege
ended--as end it must--and the garrison borne silently away in his
custody to the prison house.

Up the aisle marched Dangerfield, not abating his pace, but with a swift
and bracing clatter, like a man taking a frosty constitutional walk.

Irons was moping softly about in the neighbourhood of the reading-desk,
and about to mark the places of psalms and chapters in the great church
Bible and Prayer-book, and sidelong he beheld his crony of the angle
marching, with a grim confidence and swiftness, up the aisle.

'I say, where's Martin?' said Dangerfield, cheerfully.

'He's gone away, Sir.'

'Hey! then you've no one with you?'

'No, Sir.'

Dangerfield walked straight on, up the step of the communion-table, and
shoving open the little balustraded door, he made a gay stride or two
across the holy precinct, and with a quick right-about face, came to a
halt, the white, scoffing face, for exercise never flushed it, and the
cold, broad sheen of the spectacles, looked odd in the clerk's eyes,
facing the church-door, from beside the table of the sacrament,
displayed, as it were, in the very frame--foreground, background, and
all--in which he was wont to behold the thoughtful, simple, holy face of
the rector.

'Alone among the dead; and not afraid?' croaked the white face
pleasantly.

The clerk seemed always to writhe and sweat silently under the banter of
his comrade of the landing-net, and he answered, without lifting his
head, in a constrained and dogged sort of way, like a man who expects
something unpleasant--

'Alone? yes, Sir, there's none here but ourselves.'

And his face flushed, and the veins on his forehead stood out, as will
happen with a man who tugs at a weight that is too much for him.

'I saw you steal a glance at Charles when he came into the church here,
and it strikes me I was at the moment thinking of the same thing as you,
to wit, will he require any special service at our hands? Well, he does!
and you or I must do it. He'll give a thousand pounds, mind ye; and
that's something in the way of fellows like you and me; and whatever
else he may have d