ted
in a day or two, and we knew there'd be a set-out about it with the
organist, we didn't say nothing to any one else, and I suppose the
workmen they swept up the bit that was left along with the rest of the
rubbish. But Evans, if you were to ask him this very day about it,
he'd stick to it he saw that paper wet and black at the end where it
was torn."

After that the boys gave the choir a wide berth, so that Worby was not
sure what was the result of the mason's renewed mending of the tomb.
Only he made out from fragments of conversation dropped by the workmen
passing through the choir that some difficulty had been met with, and
that the governor--Mr. Palmer to wit--had tried his own hand at the
job. A little later, he happened to see Mr. Palmer himself knocking at
the door of the Deanery and being admitted by the butler. A day or so
after that, he gathered from a remark his father let fall at breakfast
that something a little out of the common was to be done in the
Cathedral after morning service on the morrow. "And I'd just as soon
it was to-day," his father added, "I don't see the use of running
risks." "'Father,' I says, 'what are you going to do in the Cathedral
to-morrow?' and he turned on me as savage as I ever see him--he was a
wonderful good-tempered man as a general thing, my poor father was.
'My lad,' he says, 'I'll trouble you not to go picking up your elders'
and betters' talk: it's not manners and it's not straight. What I'm
going to do or not going to do in the Cathedral to-morrow is none of
your business: and if I catch sight of you hanging about the place
to-morrow after your work's done, I'll send you home with a flea in
your ear. Now you mind that.' Of course I said I was very sorry and
that, and equally of course I went off and laid my plans with Evans.
We knew there was a stair up in the corner of the transept which you
can get up to the triforium, and in them days the door to it was
pretty well always open, and even if it wasn't we knew the key usually
laid under a bit of matting hard by. So we made up our minds we'd be
putting away music and that, next morning while the rest of the boys
was clearing off, and then slip up the stairs and watch from the
triforium if there was any signs of work going on.

"Well, that same night I dropped off asleep as sound as a boy does,
and all of a sudden the dog woke me up, coming into the bed, and
thought I, now we're going to get it sharp, for he seemed more