ss Thornton wrote to the Bishop, with whom she had some acquaintance,
and told him how her brother had been struck down with paralysis, and
that the parish was unprovided for; that if he would send any gentleman
he approved of, she would gladly receive him at Drumston.

Armed with this letter, Tom found himself, for the first time in his
life, in an episcopal palace. A sleek servant in black opened the door
with cat-like tread, and admitted him into a dark, warm hall; and on
Tom's saying, in a hoarse whisper, as if he was in church, that he had
brought a note of importance, and would wait for an answer, the man
glided away, and disappeared through a spring-door, which swung to
behind him. Tom thought it would have banged, but it didn't. Bishops'
doors never bang.

Tom had a great awe for your peers spiritual. He could get on well
enough with a peer temporal, particularly if that proud aristocrat
happened to be in want of a horse; but a bishop was quite another
matter.

So he sat rather uncomfortable in the dark, warm hall, listening to
such dull sounds as could be heard in the gloomy mansion. A broad oak
staircase led up from the hall into lighter regions, and there stood,
on a landing above, a lean, wheezy old clock, all over brass knobs,
which, as he looked on it, choked, and sneezed four.

But now there was a new sound in the house. An indecent, secular sound.
A door near the top of the house was burst violently open, and there
was a scuffle. A loud voice shouted twice unmistakeably and distinctly,
"So--o, good bitch!" And then the astounded Tom heard the worrying of a
terrier, and the squeak of a dying rat. There was no mistake about it;
he heard the bones crack. Then he made out that a dog was induced to go
into a room on false pretences, and deftly shut up there, and then he
heard a heavy step descending the stairs towards him.

But, before there was time for the perpetrator of these sacrileges to
come in sight, a side door opened, and the Bishop himself came forth
with a letter in his hand (a mild, clever, gentlemanly-looking man he
was too, Tom remarked) and said,--

"Pray is there not a messenger from Drumston here?"

Tom replied that he had brought a letter from his cousin the Vicar. He
had rather expected to hear it demanded, "Where is the audacious man
who has dared to penetrate these sacred shades?" and was agreeably
relieved to find that the Bishop wasn't angry with him.

"Dear me," said the Bisho