"No, they are not there," he said. "They only come at night. How can I describe them? How can you describe a shadow? They are all shadows, and they seem everywhere at once. I never hear them, but I can see them and feel them. I mean that I feel them morally—their influence: of course you cannot handle a ghost. The air grows cold, and an icy wind touches my face as they pass to and fro."
"Then if the wind is icy they cannot come from purgatory?" suggested H.C. very innocently.
The old verger seemed a little doubtful; the idea had not occurred to him. "I don't know about that," he said. "I have heard that the extremes of heat and cold have the same effect upon one. So perhaps what feels like ice to me is really the opposite. But my idea is that the ghosts who appear on earth are exempt from purgatory: to visit the scenes of their former haunts under different conditions must be sufficient punishment for their worst sins."
So that our verger was also a philosopher.
"Have you never spoken to one, and made some inquiry about the next world?" we asked. "Have they never given you some idea of what it is all like?"
"Never," he replied. "I am much too frightened. Just as frightened now as I was when I first saw them fifty years ago. Nor would they reply. How can they? How can shadows talk? I only once took courage to speak," he added, as if by an after recollection. "I thought it was the ghost of a woman who promised to marry me, and then jilted me for a journeyman cabinet-maker. He treated her badly and she died at the end of two years. Somehow I felt as if it was her spirit hovering about me, and I took courage and spoke."
"Well?"
"I received no answer; only a long, long sigh, which seemed to float all through the building and pass away out of the windows. But it was a windy night, and it may have been only that. For if shadows can't talk, I don't see how they can sigh."
The old verger evidently had faith in his ghosts. The fancy had gained upon him and strengthened with time into part of himself; as inseparable from the cathedral as its aisles and arches.