weet voices of the
surpliced choristers, and the grand deep tones of the organ, echoing
through the fretted roof, and rolling round the long pillared aisles.
There were not ten people there besides myself, the clergy and the choir
forming the bulk of the assembly. As soon as the service had been gone
through, the clergy and the choir filed out, and the lay people one by
one departed.

I should have liked to sit where I was all night. It was at least warm
and sheltered, and I have slept on worse beds than may be made of half
a dozen Cathedral chairs. But presently the verger came round, and
perceiving at a glance that I was not a person likely to possess a
superfluous sixpence, asked me if I was going to sit there all night.
I said I was if he didn't mind; but he did, and there was nothing for
it but to clear out.

"Haven't you got nowhere to go to?" asked the man, as I moved slowly
off.

"Nowhere in particular," I answered.

"That's a bad look-out for Christmas-eve. Why don't you go over to
Watts's?"

"What's Watts's?"

"It's a house in High Street, where you'll get a good supper, a bed,
and a fourpenny-bit in the morning if you can show you'em an honest man,
and not a regular tramp. There's old Watts's muniment down by the side
of the choir. A reglar brick he was, who not only wrote beautiful hymns,
but gave away his money for the relief of the pore."

My heart warmed to the good old Doctor whose hymns I had learnt in
my youth, little thinking that the day would come when I should be
thankful to him for more substantial nourishment. I had intended to
go in the ordinary way to get a night's lodging in the casual ward;
but Watts's was evidently a better game, and getting from the verger
minute directions how to proceed in order to gain admittance to
Watts's, I left the Cathedral.

The verger was not a bad-hearted fellow, I am sure, though he did speak
roughly to me at first. He seemed struck with the fact that a man not
too well clad, who had nowhere particular to sleep on the eve of
Christmas Day, could scarcely be expected to be "merry." All the time
he was talking about Watts's he was fumbling in his waistcoat pocket,
and I know he was feeling if he had there a threepenny-bit. But if he
had, it didn't come immediately handy, and before he got hold of it
the thought of the sufficient provision which awaited me at Watts's
afforded vicarious satisfaction to his charitable feelings, and he
was content with bid