ely
gleaming eyes.

At that very moment there rose up from far away to the ears of the
stricken gazer the sound of a cock-crow. The gazer wilted back in his
seat; turning white, he held his hands to his eyes, his whole frame
trembling. His two companions, who had now been aroused by his movement,
looked upon him with astonishment.

'What's the matter, my dear fellow?' inquired the 'Golden Canon.' 'You
look as if you had seen a ghost.'

'I thought,' stammered the gazer--'I thought I saw St. Cuthbert--I mean
some apparition--in the recess there.'

'It's only the moon,' the 'Golden Canon' replied, after a cursory glance
in that direction. 'If you don't like it just draw the curtains.'

But the Minor Canon had already risen from his seat, and, with unsteady
footsteps, passed to the door murmuring brokenly to himself, '_Peccavi,
peccavi_' as he withdrew from the dining-room.

'A nice fellow,' commented the 'Golden Canon,' 'but he has, I fear, a
rotten digestion.

'Help yourself to that white port, cousin; then we'll finish our talk
over a pipe of tobacco.'

BY THE SHRINE OF SAINT CUTHBERT

The bells were ringing to evensong in the great cathedral dedicated to
Saint Cuthbert, that stands like a fortress on its rock above the
murmuring Wear--

_'Half house of God, half castle 'gainst the Scot'--_

in the windy dusk of a November evening.

The people of the saint, however--the 'Haliwer folc,' the 'folk of the
Holy Man'--were few in attendance that afternoon, and the great nave
seemed very empty as I sat down in a seat in front of the 'Galilee'
beside the north door of entry.

I looked about me and admired the mighty Norman pillars diapered and
fluted with exceeding skill by the great master builders of old, who
built to, even as their great duke swore by, the 'Splendour of God.' My
eye wandered upward and rested upon the great chevrons resembling
sword-cuts that seemed deep-hacked within the rounded arches of the
Triforium. Thence onward my gaze fluttered like a butterfly, and rested
upon a leering corbel, which seemed to scoff at priest and priest-craft
with protruding tongue. The mighty stone roof soaring aloft--a ship's
keel upturned--drew my eye eastward to the choir; there on the great
east window, rose-shaped and many-coloured, the invading dusk gathered
like water-drops upon the panes, and wove its dun mantle over them. The
anthem now pealed along the roof, lapping capitals, corbels, and pill