the chevron-mouldings of heavy
vaulting-ribs.

Westray sat down near the door, and was so engrossed in the study of the
building and in the strange play of the shafts of sunlight across the
massive stonework, that half an hour passed before he rose to walk up
the church.

A solid stone screen separates the choir from the nave, making, as it
were, two churches out of one; but as Westray opened the doors between
them, he heard four voices calling to him, and, looking up, saw above
his head the four tower arches. "The arch never sleeps," cried one.
"They have bound on us a burden too heavy to be borne," answered
another. "We never sleep," said the third; and the fourth returned to
the old refrain, "The arch never sleeps, never sleeps."

As he considered them in the daylight, he wondered still more at their
breadth and slenderness, and was still more surprised that his Chief had
made so light of the settlement and of the ominous crack in the south
wall.

The choir is a hundred and forty years later than the nave, ornate Early
English, with a multiplication of lancet-windows which rich
hood-mouldings group into twos and threes, and at the east end into
seven. Here are innumerable shafts of dark-grey purbeck marble,
elaborate capitals, deeply undercut foliage, and broad-winged angels
bearing up the vaulting shafts on which rests the sharply-pointed roof.

The spiritual needs of Cullerne were amply served by this portion of the
church alone, and, except at confirmations or on Militia Sunday, the
congregation never overflowed into the nave. All who came to the
minster found there full accommodation, and could indeed worship in much
comfort; for in front of the canopied stalls erected by Abbot Vinnicomb
in 1530 were ranged long rows of pews, in which green baize and brass
nails, cushions and hassocks, and Prayer-Book boxes ministered to the
devotion of the occupants. Anybody who aspired to social status in
Cullerne rented one of these pews, but for as many as could not afford
such luxury in their religion there were provided other seats of deal,
which had, indeed, no baize or hassocks, nor any numbers on the doors,
but were, for all that, exceedingly appropriate and commodious.

The clerk was dusting the stalls as the architect entered the choir, and
made for him at once as the hawk swoops on its quarry. Westray did not
attempt to escape his fate, and hoped, indeed, that from the old man's
garrulity he might glean