“The sextons, proud, stuck-up gentlemen, be made up of carelessness and anything else that’s bad!” groaned Ketch. “Holding up their heads above us porters!”
It was worth the trial. The bishop rose from the chair, and groped his way out of the chapter-house, the two others following.
“If it hadn’t been for that Jenkins’s folly, fancying he saw a light in the burying-ground, and me turning round to order him to come on, it might not have happened,” grumbled Ketch, as they wound round the cloisters.
“A light in the burial-ground!” hastily repeated the bishop. “What light?”
“Oh, a corpse-candle, or some nonsense of that sort, he had his mind running on, my lord. Half the world is idiots, and Jenkins is the biggest of ‘em.”
“My lord,” spoke poor Jenkins, deprecatingly, “I never had such a thought within me as that it was a ‘corpse-candle.’ I said I fancied it might be a glowworm. And I believe it was one, my lord.”
“A more sensible thought than the other,” observed the prelate.
Luck at last! The door was found to be unlocked. It was a low narrow door, only used on the very rare occasion of a funeral, and was situated in a shady, out-of-the-way nook, where no one ever thought of looking. “Oh, come, this is something!” cried the bishop, cheerily, as he stepped into the cathedral.
“And your lordship now sees what fine careless sextons we have got!” struck in Ketch.
“We must overlook their carelessness this time, in consideration of the service it renders us,” said the bishop, in a kindly tone. “Take care of the pillars, Ketch.”