nothing, but I could see as the gesters [gestures] was all right."

This old clerk was prominently devout in the church responses, and had
some original pronunciations of unusual words; in the Nicene Creed he
generally followed a few bars, so to speak, behind the Vicar, but one
never failed to catch the words "apost'lick church" towards the end.
He was very scornful of ghosts, and told me that he had been about the
churchyard very often at night for fifty years without seeing anything
like an apparition. But the whole village was alarmed, including the
clerk, one Sunday when, about midnight, the tenor bell was heard
solemnly tolling. The clerk, with some supporters and a lantern,
unlocked the door, and found the village idiot--silly C.--in the tower
ringing the bell. It appeared that, after service, the clerk had
extinguished the lights and locked up for the night about eight
o'clock. C., who had gone to sleep in the gallery with his head upon
his arms before him on the desk, slumbered on until he woke in alarm
some four hours later, to find himself alone and the church in total
darkness, but he was intelligent enough to remember the bell and get
his release.

C. had a hand-to-hand fight in the church tower with Aldington's
special imbecile. After service the clerk invited me to the scene of
the battle, pointing out some crimson traces on the stone pavement. I
called upon our imbecile's parents on my way home, and the old father
was greatly shocked. "Here he be, sir," he said; "I hope you'll give
him a jolly good hiding." I told him I could hardly undertake the rôle
of executioner on a Sunday, in cold blood, and contented myself with a
severe reprimand.

I was handing the collecting-bag one morning after service, and