"To be sure, madam,—my lady,—that is, your holiness," stammered Saddleton, trembling at the thought of the task assigned him. "To be sure, your ladyship; only—that is—"
"Emanuel," said the Saint, "you'll do my bidding; or it would be better you had!" and her eye changed from a dove's eye to that of a hawk, and a flash came from it as bright as the one from her little finger. The Clerk shook in his shoes, and, again dashing the cold perspiration from his brow, followed the footsteps of his mysterious guide.
The next morning all Chatham was in an uproar. The Clerk of St. Bridget's had found himself at home at daybreak, seated in his own arm-chair, the fire out, and—the tankard of ale quite exhausted. Who had drunk it? Where had he been? How had he got home?—all was a mystery: he remembered "a mass of things, but nothing distinctly;" all was fog and fantasy. What he could clearly recollect was, that he had dug up the grinning sailor, and that the Saint had helped to throw him into the river again. All was thenceforth wonderment and devotion. Masses were sung, tapers were kindled, bells were tolled; the monks of St. Romuald had a solemn procession, the abbot at their head, the sacristan at their tail, and the holy breeches of St. Thomas-à-Becket in the centre; Father Fothergill brewed a XXX puncheon of holy-water. The Rood of Gillingham was deserted; the chapel of Rainham forsaken; every one who had a soul to be saved flocked with his offering to St. Bridget's shrine, and Emanuel Saddleton gathered more fees from the promiscuous piety of that one week than he had pocketed during the twelve preceding months.
Meanwhile the corpse of the ejected reprobate oscillated like a pendulum between Sheerness and Gillingham Reach. Now borne by the Medway into the Western Swale, now carried by the refluent tide back to the vicinity of its old quarters, it seemed as though the River god and Neptune were amusing themselves with a game of subaqueous battledore, and had chosen this unfortunate carcass as a marine shuttlecock. For some time the alternation was kept up with great spirit, till Boreas, interfering in the shape of a stiffish "Nor'-wester," drifted the bone (and flesh) of contention ashore on the Shurland domain, where it lay in all the majesty of mud. It was soon discovered by the retainers, and dragged from its oozy bed, grinning worse than ever. Tidings of the god-send were of course carried instantly to the castle, for the Baron was a very great man; and if a dun crow had flown across his property unannounced by the warder, the Baron would have kicked him, the said warder, from the topmost battlement into the bottommost ditch,—a descent of peril, and one which "Ludwig the leaper," or the illustrious Trenk himself, might well have shrunk from encountering.
"An't please your lordship—" said Peter Periwinkle.
"No, villain! it does not please me!" roared the Baron.
His lordship was deeply engaged with a peck of Feversham oysters,—he doted on shellfish, hated interruption at meals, and had not yet despatched more than twenty dozen of the "natives."
"There's a body, my lord, washed ashore in the lower creek," said the seneschal.
The Baron was going to throw the shells at his head; but paused in the act, and said with much dignity,