e clerk had
extinguished the lights and locked up for the night about eight
o'clock. C., who had gone to sleep in the gallery with his head upon
his arms before him on the desk, slumbered on until he woke in alarm
some four hours later, to find himself alone and the church in total
darkness, but he was intelligent enough to remember the bell and get
his release.

C. had a hand-to-hand fight in the church tower with Aldington's
special imbecile. After service the clerk invited me to the scene of
the battle, pointing out some crimson traces on the stone pavement. I
called upon our imbecile's parents on my way home, and the old father
was greatly shocked. "Here he be, sir," he said; "I hope you'll give
him a jolly good hiding." I told him I could hardly undertake the role
of executioner on a Sunday, in cold blood, and contented myself with a
severe reprimand.

I was handing the collecting-bag one morning after service, and
finding it did not return from the end of the row of chairs as quickly
as usual, I discovered this same individual with his hand _in the
bag_. I signed to him impatiently to pass it back. After service he
came to the vestry and said that he had contributed a florin in
mistake for a penny, and was trying to retrieve it. I could generally
estimate pretty accurately the amount of the collection, as I handed
the bag, knowing the extent of each person's usual gift, and sure
enough, there was an extra florin among the coins, with which I sent
him away happy.

The parish must have been an uncivilized place in former times; there
was an accusing record beneath the west window of the tower, in the
shape of a blocked up entrance. I was told that the ringers, not
wishing to enter or leave the tower through the church door during
service, and also to facilitate the smuggling in of unlimited cider
had, after strenuous efforts, cut an opening through the ancient wall
and base some feet in thickness, and that the achievement was
announced to the village by uproarious cheering when at last they
succeeded. A door was afterwards fitted to the aperture, but the
entrance was abolished later by a more reverent Vicar.

The belfry was decorated with various bones of legs of mutton and of
joints of beef, hung up to commemorate notable weddings of prominent
parishioners--perhaps, too, as a hint to future aspirants to the state
of matrimony--when the ringers had enjoyed a substantial meal and
gallons of cider at the expense