Mr. Wesley knew Mr. Wogan. He undid the lock, Mr. Wogan smuggled himself within, and nearly choked Mr. Wesley in his embrace.
'It is a giant!' said Mr. Wesley, putting up his candle to Wogan's face. The wind blew on the light that flickered in the absolute darkness, all the house being hung with black for Mrs. Atterbury's death.
'A son of Anak, Sam, who would have battered down your old door in a minute.'
'I verily believe you would, Nick,' said Sam, leading the way up the black stairs to a den of his own, where he was within call of the Bishop. On tiptoe he marched, placing his finger on his lips.
When they were got among Sam's books and papers of the boys' exercises, the usher said, 'It is a very extraordinary thing, purely a Providence.'
'I deserve one; the purity of my life deserves one,' said Mr. Wogan. 'But wherein do you see the marvel?'
'You did not know it, but you gave my father's knock,' said Sam in a voice of awe. 'It is Old Jeffrey's doing--directed, of course--directed.'
'Old Jeffrey? Is it a cant name for an honest man?'
'For a very honest spirit,' said the usher, and explained to Mr. Wogan that the particular knock and the passwords to follow (which Mr. Wogan did not know) were his own invention. His father's house at Epworth, in the year 1716, had been troubled, it seems, by an honest goblin that always thumped and routed with a particular malevolence when the Elector was prayed for as 'the King.' Old Mr. Wesley's pet knock, though, the sprite could not deliver. Mr. Wesley had a conceit that the goblin might be the ghost of some good fellow who died at Preston.
'He keeps his politics in the next world,' said Mr. Wogan.