y humour me in
that matter. And as to the pulpit (which I've preached from for thirty
years, though I don't insist on that) all I'll say is, I _know_ you're
doing wrong in moving it." "But what sense could there be, my dear
Doctor, in leaving it where it is, when we're fitting up the rest of
the choir in a totally different _style_? What reason could be
given--apart from the look of the thing?" "Reason! reason!" said old
Dr. Ayloff; "if you young men--if I may say so without any disrespect,
Mr. Dean--if you'd only listen to reason a little, and not be always
asking for it, we should get on better. But there, I've said my say."
The old gentleman hobbled off, and as it proved, never entered the
Cathedral again. The season--it was a hot summer--turned sickly on a
sudden. Dr. Ayloff was one of the first to go, with some affection of
the muscles of the thorax, which took him painfully at night. And at
many services the number of choirmen and boys was very thin.

Meanwhile the pulpit had been done away with. In fact, the
sounding-board (part of which still exists as a table in a
summer-house in the palace garden) was taken down within an hour or
two of Dr. Ayloff's protest. The removal of the base--not effected
without considerable trouble--disclosed to view, greatly to the
exultation of the restoring party, an altar-tomb--the tomb, of course,
to which Worby had attracted Lake's attention that same evening. Much
fruitless research was expended in attempts to identify the occupant;
from that day to this he has never had a name put to him. The
structure had been most carefully boxed in under the pulpit-base, so
that such slight ornament as it possessed was not defaced; only on the
north side of it there was what looked like an injury; a gap between
two of the slabs composing the side. It might be two or three inches
across. Palmer, the mason, was directed to fill it up in a week's
time, when he came to do some other small jobs near that part of the
choir.

The season was undoubtedly a very trying one. Whether the church was
built on a site that had once been a marsh, as was suggested, or for
whatever reason, the residents in its immediate neighbourhood had,
many of them, but little enjoyment of the exquisite sunny days and
the calm nights of August and September. To several of the older
people--Dr. Ayloff, among others, as we have seen--the summer proved
downright fatal, but even among the younger, few escaped either a
sojou