Grim Death, in skeleton form, who stood as counterbalance to Time on the other side of the arch, pickaxe in one hand, dart in the other, also maintained a stubborn silence, perhaps because offended, for though most people considered that he held a pickaxe for grave-digging purposes, there were others who insisted upon its being a cross-bow with which he was armed.
As for the stained-glass cherubim and seraphim, playing guitar, bass viol, cornet, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music, they seemed to be too busy with their heavenly harmonies to notice such mundane matters as pounds, shillings, and pence. Judas, the bag-bearer, was not visible, or—on the principle of “set a thief to catch a thief”—he might have told tales; but painted on the ceiling were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—well painted too, though the artist’s evangelical emblems of bull, eagle, and lamb were not quite up to nature.
But none of these pointed out the offender, and the old vicar walked disconsolately up and down his church, pausing here and there as if lost amidst the different surmises which flooded his brain; but there was no information to be gained. The mystery was not concealed amongst the carved oak window draperies, and cottage pattern wood-work, which hid the stone tracery of the old east window; it was not behind the spindle balustrade communion rails, nor the iron-barred workhouse-window-like rood-screen, nor in the brass-nailed, red-curtained, soft-cushioned, high-sided pews, where City folk loved to snooze on Sundays.
The mystery continued, but it was invisible, and though poor Mr Gray looked appealingly at the cross-legged Templar upon his back, and at the brasses rescued from trampling feet to be fixed in the wall, neither father nor mother, nor right or left, one of the steplike regular sons and daughters, brazen-faced as they were, whispered him a word more than did the black, fork-tongued, barb-tailed, huge-clawed, ancient stained-glass devil, so busy watching the Virgin and Child in the clerestory window.
So the Reverend John Gray sighed, and softly rubbed his hands, and the poor-boxes were still robbed.
Volume Two—Chapter Nine.
The Love of Nature.
Harry Clayton had been gone three months, and, clothed in a perfect Joseph’s coat of a dressing-gown, Lionel Redgrave lolled upon his sofa, talking pettishly to his landlord, who stood before him holding a slip of paper in his hand.