South West Pier of Tower.
It was past eleven when he entered the church with lantern and tools. The stone was heavy, and it took a considerable time to dislodge and lift it. Beneath it he saw a vault, some five feet deep. He lowered his lamp into it. Great was his disappointment to find it blankly empty. He had so fastened his expectations on this particular spot that hardly yet could he think himself mistaken. He let himself down into the vault that he might explore for some recess in its walls or floor.
He was still groping in semi-gloom when, above his head, he caught the sound of quiet treading, and then a waft of strange music. He was too unskilled to tell what the instrument might be, but the sound of it was soft and pleasant. It rose, and died away, and rose again in fitful strains. Then it went on in a continuous melody and was taken up by a voice peculiarly sweet and clear—so clear that the words were plainly distinguishable. “When the Lord turned again the captivity of Sion then were we like unto them that dream.”
Thomas listened in amazement till the psalm ended and silence returned. Then he heard the shuffling of descending steps, and with a sudden horror he remembered the story of the dead men’s staircase and the phantom procession. He heard a door softly open in the dark transept, and he sprang wildly to the bell-rope above his head. One frightful clang: Mark spoke again after twenty years of silence: a rumble and a roar: the heavy bell splintered itself on the floor beneath, and Thankfull Thomas, in a pool of blood, lay in the grave of his own making.
In a corner of the belfry, where the floor was not broken by the falling bell, they discovered the organ, which had been hidden there since 1642.
The Restoration brought back a few survivors of the expelled Society of 1642, and with them Gervase Germyn. But in 1664 I find that George Loosemore was master of the College choristers, and Germyn was dead. At what precise date he died I cannot say. But one thing is known. The Chapel, after long neglect and misappropriation, was repaired, decorated and restored to Anglican usage about the year 1663. The reconciliation of the Church was marked by a choral service, and Germyn occupied his old seat at the organ. Among the psalms chosen for the service was the 126th, In convertendo captivitatem Sion. The singers had reached the last verse—“He that now goeth on his way weeping and beareth forth good seed: shall doubtless come again with joy and bring his sheaves with him.” There the organ accompaniment faltered, failed, died, and left the choir to chant the Gloria unassisted. The grey head of Gervase Germyn lay on the key-board, and the College had to seek a new organist.
The Palladium
