“Got to do wi’ it, lad? Well I am! And to call them leather.”
“Well, so they are leather,” said Vane. “And do you mean to say, standing theer with the turn-stones all around you as you think anything bout t’owd church arn’t true?”
“No, but I don’t think it’s true about those bits of leather.”
“Leather, indeed!” cried the sexton. “I’m surprised at you, Mester Vane—that I am. Them arn’t leather but all that’s left o’ the skins o’ the Swedums and Danes as they took off ’em and nailed up on church door to keep off the rest o’ the robbin’, murderin’ and firin’ wretches as come up river in their ships and then walked the rest o’ the way across the mash?”
“Oh, but it might be a bit of horse skin.”
“Nay, nay, don’t you go backslidin’ and thinking such a thing as that, mester. Why, theer was a party o’ larned gentlemen come one day all t’way fro’ Lincoln, and looked at it through little tallerscope things, and me standing close by all the time to see as they didn’t steal nowt, for them sort’s terruble folk for knocking bits off wi’ hammers as they carries in their pockets and spreadin’ bits o’ calico over t’ brasses, and rubbin’ ’em wi’ heel balls same as I uses for edges of soles; and first one and then another of ’em says—‘Human.’ That’s what they says. Ay, lad, that’s true enough, and been here to this day.”
“Ah, well, open the door, Mike, and let’s go in. I don’t believe people would have been such wretches as to skin a man, even if he was a Dane, and then nail the skin up there. But if they did, it wouldn’t have lasted.”
The sexton shook his head very solemnly and turned the great key, the rusty lock-bolt shooting back reluctantly, and the door turning slowly on its hinges, which gave forth a dismal creak.
“Here, let’s give them a drop of oil,” cried Vane; but the sexton held the bottle behind him.
“Nay, nay,” he said; “they’re all right enew. Let ’em be, lad.”