“I was tied to it,” said the spook, “I was told that I never more should go under one of them, whether I would or not.”
“Some people will tell you anything,” answered Caleb.
“It was a Bishop,” explained the spook.
“Ah!” said Caleb, “that’s different, of course.”
The spook told Caleb how often he had tried to go under the pointed arches, sometimes of the doors, sometimes of the windows, and how a stream of wind always struck him from the point of the arch, and drifted him back into the Church. He had long given up trying.
“You should have been outside,” said Caleb, “before they built the last door.”
“It was my Church,” said the spook, “and I was too proud to leave.”
Caleb began to sympathise with the spook. He had a pride in the Church himself, and disliked even to hear another person say Amen before him. He also began to be a little jealous of this stranger who had been six hundred years in possession of the Church in which Caleb had believed himself, under the Vicar, to be master. And he began to plot.
“Why do you want to get out?” he asked.
“I’m no use here,” was the reply, “I don’t get enough to do to keep myself warm. And I know there are scores of Churches now without any kirk-spooks at all. I can hear their cheap little bells dinging every Sunday.”