hus the
eye was carried up from beauty to beauty until it seemed lost in
dreamland. Wandering aside, it fell upon the aisles and side chapels,
visions of beauty interrupted only by the wonderful columns, with their
fine bases and rich capitals. The east window seemed very far off, a
portion of it lost in the curve to the left, together with the beautiful
gothic arches and double triforium of that side of the choir.

We sat and gazed upon all, and lost ourselves in the spell of the
vision; and presently our old friend the verger found us out.

"But you _live_ in the cathedral!" he exclaimed.

"No," we replied; "we should only like to do so. We envy you, whose days
are chiefly passed here."

"I don't know," he returned, with the resigned air of a martyr. "If you
had trodden this pavement for fifty years as I have, I think you would
like to change the scene. And I have not the chance of doing it even in
the next state, for you know I have a conviction that I shall come back
here as a ghost. I thought _you_ were ghosts last night, and a fine
fright you gave me. I don't know why ghosts should frighten one, but
they do. I don't like to feel that when I get into the next state, and
come back to earth as a ghost, I shall frighten people. It would be
better not to come back at all."

"What are they like, those that you have seen?" we asked, out of
curiosity.

He closed his eyes, as if invoking a vision, put on a very solemn
expression, and then opened them with a wide stare into vacancy. We
quite started and looked behind us to see if any were visible.

"No, they are not there," he said. "They only come at night. How can I
describe them? How can you describe a shadow? They are all shadows, and
they seem everywhere at once. I never hear them, but I can see them and
feel them. I mean that I feel them morally--their influence: of course
you cannot handle a ghost. The air grows cold, and an icy wind touches
my face as they pass to and fro."

"Then if the wind is icy they cannot come from purgatory?" suggested
H.C. very innocently.

The old verger seemed a little doubtful; the idea had not occurred to
him. "I don't know about that," he said. "I have heard that the extremes
of heat and cold have the same effect upon one. So perhaps what feels
like ice to me is really the opposite. But my idea is that the ghosts
who appear on earth are exempt from purgatory: to visit the scenes of
their former haunts under different conditio