of sniff, and walked
straight up to the tomb, and took his stand behind it with his back to
the screen, and the others they come edging up rather gingerly.
Henslow, he stopped on the south side and scratched on his chin, he
did. Then the Dean spoke up: 'Palmer,' he says, 'which can you do
easiest, get the slab off the top, or shift one of the side slabs?'

"Old Palmer and his men they pottered about a bit looking round the
edge of the top slab and sounding the sides on the south and east and
west and everywhere but the north. Henslow said something about it
being better to have a try at the south side, because there was more
light and more room to move about in. Then my father, who'd been
watching of them, went round to the north side, and knelt down and
felt of the slab by the chink, and he got up and dusted his knees and
says to the Dean: 'Beg pardon, Mr. Dean, but I think if Mr. Palmer'll
try this here slab he'll find it'll come out easy enough. Seems to me
one of the men could prize it out with his crow by means of this
chink.' 'Ah! thank you, Worby,' says the Dean; 'that's a good
suggestion. Palmer, let one of your men do that, will you?'

"So the man come round, and put his bar in and bore on it, and just
that minute when they were all bending over, and we boys got our heads
well out over the edge of the triforium, there come a most fearful
crash down at the west end of the choir, as if a whole stack of big
timber had fallen down a flight of stairs. Well, you can't expect me
to tell you everything that happened all in a minute. Of course there
was a terrible commotion. I heard the slab fall out, and the crowbar
on the floor, and I heard the Dean say 'Good God!'

"When I looked down again I saw the Dean tumbled over on the floor,
the men was making off down the choir, Henslow was just going to help
the Dean up, Palmer was going to stop the men, as he said afterwards,
and my father was sitting on the altar step with his face in his
hands. The Dean he was very cross. 'I wish to goodness you'd look
where you're coming to, Henslow,' he says. 'Why you should all take
to your heels when a stick of wood tumbles down I cannot imagine,' and
all Henslow could do, explaining he was right away on the other side
of the tomb, would not satisfy him.

"Then Palmer came back and reported there was nothing to account for
this noise and nothing seemingly fallen down, and when the Dean
finished feeling of himself they gathered rou