had been well and truly examined; the sacristan still keeping at
Dennistoun's heels, and every now and then whipping round as if he had
been stung, when one or other of the strange noises that trouble a
large empty building fell on his ear. Curious noises they were
sometimes.

"Once," Dennistoun said to me, "I could have sworn I heard a thin
metallic voice laughing high up in the tower. I darted an inquiring
glance at my sacristan. He was white to the lips. 'It is he--that is--it
is no one; the door is locked,' was all he said, and we looked at each
other for a full minute."

Another little incident puzzled Dennistoun a good deal. He was examining
a large dark picture that hangs behind the altar, one of a series
illustrating the miracles of St. Bertrand. The composition of the
picture is well-nigh indecipherable, but there is a Latin legend below,
which runs thus:

"Qualiter S. Bertrandus liberavit hominem quem
diabolus diu volebat strangulare." (How St.
Bertrand delivered a man whom the Devil long
sought to strangle.)

Dennistoun was turning to the sacristan with a smile and a jocular
remark of some sort on his lips, but he was confounded to see the old
man on his knees, gazing at the picture with the eye of a suppliant in
agony, his hands tightly clasped, and a rain of tears on his cheeks.
Dennistoun naturally pretended to have noticed nothing, but the question
would not away from him, "Why should a daub of this kind affect any one
so strongly?" He seemed to himself to be getting some sort of clue to