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 a 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 Emmanual 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 godsend were of course carried
instantly to the castle; for the Baron was a very great man; and if a
dun cow had flown across his property unannounced by the warder, the
Baron would have pecked 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 Trenck himself, might