or cupboard.

She was frightened when she saw the figure in her room, and she could
not tell whether her visitor might not have made his entrance from the
contiguous churchyard. So, sitting bolt upright in her bed, her grey
hair almost lifting her kerchief off her head, and all over in "a fit
o' t' creepins," as she expressed it, she demanded:

"In God's name, what want ye thar?"

"Whar's the peppermint ye used to hev by ye, woman? I'm bad wi' an
inward pain."

"It's all gane a month sin'," she answered; and offered to make him a
"het" drink if he'd get to his room.

But he said:

"Never mind, I'll try a mouthful o' gin."

And, turning on his heel, he left her.

In the morning the sexton was gone. Not only in his lodging was there
no account of him, but, when inquiry began to be extended, nowhere in
the village of Golden Friars could he be found.

Still he might have gone off, on business of his own, to some distant
village, before the town was stirring; and the sexton had no near
kindred to trouble their heads about him. People, therefore, were
willing to wait, and take his return ultimately for granted.

At three o'clock the good Vicar, standing at his hall door, looking
across the lake towards the noble fells that rise, steep and furrowed,
from that beautiful mere, saw two men approaching across the green, in
a straight line, from a boat that was moored at the water's edge. They
were carrying between them something which, though not very large,
seemed ponderous.

"Ye'll ken this, sir," said one of the boatmen as they set down,
almost at his feet, a small church bell, such as in old-fashioned
chimes yields the treble notes.

"This won't be less nor five stean. I ween it's fra' the church
steeple yon."

"What! one of our church bells?" ejaculated the Vicar--for a moment
lost in horrible amazement. "Oh, no!--_no_, that can't possibly be!
Where did you find it?"

He had found the boat, in the morning, moored about fifty yards from
her moorings where he had left it the night before, and could not
think how that came to pass; and now, as he and his partner were about
to take their oars, they discovered this bell in the bottom of the
boat, under a bit of canvas, also the sexton's pick and
spade--"tom-spey'ad," they termed that peculiar, broad-bladed
implement.

"Very extraordinary! We must try whether there is a bell missing from
the tower," said the Vicar, getting into a fuss. "Has Crooke come back
ye