se for me," said the clerk, with a cheerful
sense of perfect freedom from all family encumbrances. "My wife's in
the churchyard there, and my children are all married. A wretched
place this, isn't it, sir? But the parish is a large one--every man
couldn't get through the business as I do. It's learning does it, and
I've had my share, and a little more. I can talk the Queen's English
(God bless the Queen!), and that's more than most of the people about
here can do. You're from London, I suppose, sir? I've been in London a
matter of five-and-twenty year ago. What's the news there now, if you
please?"

Chattering on in this way, he led me back to the vestry. I looked
about to see if the two spies were still in sight. They were not
visible anywhere. After having discovered my application to the clerk,
they had probably concealed themselves where they could watch my next
proceedings in perfect freedom.

The vestry door was of stout old oak, studded with strong nails, and
the clerk put his large heavy key into the lock with the air of a man
who knew that he had a difficulty to encounter, and who was not quite
certain of creditably conquering it.

"I'm obliged to bring you this way, sir," he said, "because the door
from the vestry to the church is bolted on the vestry side. We might
have got in through the church otherwise. This is a perverse lock, if
ever there was one yet. It's big enough for a prison-door--it's been
hampered over and over again, and it ought to be changed for a new one.
I've mentioned that to the churchwarden fifty times over at least--he's
always saying, 'I'll see about it'--and he never does see. Ah, It's a
sort of lost corner, this place. Not like London--is it, sir? Bless
you, we are all asleep here! We don't march with the times."

After some twisting and turning of the key, the heavy lock yielded, and
he opened the door.

The vestry was larger than I should have supposed it to be, judging
from the outside only. It was a dim, mouldy, melancholy old room, with
a low, raftered ceiling. Round two sides of it, the sides nearest to
the interior of the church, ran heavy wooden presses, worm-eaten and
gaping with age. Hooked to the inner corner of one of these presses
hung several surplices, all bulging out at their lower ends in an
irreverent-looking bundle of limp drapery. Below the surplices, on the
floor, stood three packing-cases, with the lids half off, half on, and
the straw profuse