"Nay, my lord, he never was buried."

"What, the old dict was true after all?"

"So true that the workmen this very day found a skeleton erect in the
pillar they are repairing. I had sent to my lord at once, but I knew he
would be here."

"It is he! 'Tis he!" said his descendant, quickening his pace. "Let us
go see the old boy. This youth is a stranger, I think."

Gerard bowed.

"Know then that my great-great-grandfather held his head high and being
on the point of death, revolted against lying under the aisle with his
forbears for mean folk to pass over. So, as the tradition goes, he swore
his son (my great-grandfather), to bury him erect in one of the pillars
of the church" (here they entered the porch). "'For,' quoth he, 'NO BASE
MAN SHALL PASS OVER MY STOMACH.' Peste!" and even while speaking, his
lordship parried adroitly with his stick a skull that came hopping at
him, bowled by a boy in the middle of the aisle, who took to his heels
yelling with fear the moment he saw what he had done. His lordship
hurled the skull furiously after him as he ran, at which the cure gave a
shout of dismay and put forth his arm to hinder him, but was too late.

The cure groaned aloud. And as if this had evoked spirits of mischief,
up started a whole pack of children from some ambuscade, and unseen, but
heard loud enough, clattered out of the church like a covey rising in a
thick wood.

"Oh! these pernicious brats," cried the cure. "The workmen cannot go to
their nonemete but the church is rife with them. Pray Heaven they have
not found his late lordship; nay, I mind, I hid his lordship under a
workmen's jerkin, and--saints defend us! the jerkin has been moved."

The poor cure's worst misgivings were realized: the rising generation
of the plebians had played the mischief with the haughty old noble. "The
little ones had jockeyed for the bones oh," and pocketed such of them as
seemed adapted for certain primitive games then in vogue amongst them.

"I'll excommunicate them," roared the curate, "and all their race."

"Never heed," said the scapegrace lord: and stroked his hawk; "there is
enough of him to swear by. Put him back! put him back!"

"Surely, my lord, 'tis your will his bones be laid in hallowed earth,
and masses said for his poor prideful soul?"

The noble stroked his hawk.

"Are ye there, Master Cure?" said he. "Nay, the business is too old:
he is out of purgatory by this time, up or down. I shall not draw
my pu