ending was
left for a moment in bewildering darkness. He had to grope the way by
his feet feeling the stairs, and by his hand laid on the central stone
shaft which had been polished to the smoothness of marble by countless
other hands of past times.

But, after half a dozen steps, the darkness resolved; there was first
the dusk of dawn, and soon a burst of mellow light, when he reached the
stairhead and stepped out into the loft. Then there were two things
which he noticed before any other--the bow of that vast Norman arch
which spanned the opening into the south transept, with its lofty and
over-delicate roll and cavetto mouldings; and behind it the head of the
Blandamer window, where in the centre of the infinite multiplication of
the tracery shone the sea-green and silver of the nebuly coat.
Afterwards he might remark the long-drawn roof of the nave, and the
chevroned ribs of the Norman vault, delimiting bay and bay with a
saltire as they crossed; or his eyes might be led up to the lantern of
the central tower, and follow the lighter ascending lines of Abbot
Vinnicomb's Perpendicular panelling, till they vanished in the windows
far above.

Inside the loft there was room and to spare. It was formed on ample
lines, and had space for a stool or two beside the performer's seat,
while at the sides ran low bookcases which held the music library. In
these shelves rested the great folios of Boyce, and Croft, and Arnold,
Page and Greene, Battishill and Crotch--all those splendid and
ungrudging tomes for which the "Rectors and Foundation of Cullerne" had
subscribed in older and richer days. Yet these were but the children of
a later birth. Round about them stood elder brethren, for Cullerne
Minster was still left in possession of its seventeenth-century
music-books. A famous set they were, a hundred or more bound in their
old black polished calf, with a great gold medallion, and "Tenor:
Decani," or "Contra-tenor: Cantoris", "Basso," or "Sopra," stamped in
the middle of every cover. And inside was parchment with red-ruled
margins, and on the parchment were inscribed services and
"verse-anthems" and "ffull-anthems," all in engrossing hand and the most
uncompromising of black ink. Therein was a generous table of contents--
Mr Batten and Mr Gibbons, Mr Mundy and Mr Tomkins, Doctor Bull and
Doctor Giles, all neatly filed and paged; and Mr Bird would incite
singers long since turned to churchyard mould to "bring forthe ye