not whether the actuating spring of the immense affair was the Dean's water-colouring niece or the solemn deliberations of the Chapter; it mattered not that newspapers had ignobly misused the name and honour of art for their own advancement--the instant effect was overwhelmingly impressive. All that had been honest and sincere in the heart of England for a thousand years leapt mystically up and made it impossible that the effect should be other than overwhelmingly impressive. It was an effect beyond argument and reason; it was the magic flowering of centuries in a single moment, the silent awful sigh of a nation's saecular soul. It took majesty and loveliness from the walls around it, and rendered them again tenfold. It left nothing common, neither the motives nor the littleness of men. In Priam's mind it gave dignity to Lady Sophia Entwistle, and profound tragedy to the death of Leek; it transformed even the gestures of the choir-leader into grave commands.
And all that was for him! He had brushed pigments on to cloth in a way of his own, nothing more, and the nation to which he had always denied artistic perceptions, the nation which he had always fiercely accused of sentimentality, was thus solemnizing his committal to the earth! Divine mystery of art! The large magnificence of England smote him! He had not suspected his own greatness, nor England's.
The music ceased. He chanced to look up at the little glooming window, perched out of reach of mankind. And the thought that the window had burned there, patiently and unexpectantly, for hundreds of years, like an anchorite above the river and town, somehow disturbed him so that he could not continue to look at it. Ineffable sadness of a mere window! And his eye fell--fell on the coffin of Henry Leek with its white cross, and the representative of England's majesty standing beside it. And there was the end of Priam Farll's self-control. A pang like a pang of parturition itself seized him, and an issuing sob nearly ripped him in two. It was a loud sob, undisguised, unashamed, reverberating. Other sobs succeeded it. Priam Farll was in torture.
A New Hat
The organist vaulted over his seat, shocked by the outrage.
"You really mustn't make that noise," whispered the organist.
Priam Farll shook him off.
The organist was apparently at a loss what to do.
"Who is it?" whispered one of the young men.
"Don't know him from Adam!" said the organist with conviction, and then to Priam Farll: "Who are you? You've no right to be here. Who gave you permission to come up here?"
And the rending sobs continued to issue from the full-bodied ridiculous man of fifty, utterly careless of decorum.
"It's perfectly absurd!" whispered the youngster who had whispered before.
There had been a silence in the choir.
"Here! They're waiting for you!" whispered the other young man excitedly to the organist.
"By----!" whispered the alarmed organist, not stopping to say by what, but leaping like an acrobat back to his seat. His fingers and boots were at work instantly, and as he played he turned his head and whispered--
"Better fetch some one."
One of the young men crept quickly and creakingly down the stairs. Fortunately the organ and choristers were now combined to overcome the sobbing, and they succeeded. Presently a powerful arm, hidden under a black cassock, was laid on Priam's shoulder. He hysterically tried to free himself, but he could not. The cassock and the two young men thrust him downwards. They all descended together, partly walking and partly falling. And then a door was opened, and Priam discovered himself in the unroofed air of the cloisters, without his hat, and breathing in gasps. His executioners were also breathing in gasps. They glared at him in triumphant menace, as though they had done something, which indeed they had, and as though they meant to do something more but could not quite decide what.
"Where's your ticket of admission?" demanded the cassock.
Priam fumbled for it, and could not find it.
"I must have lost it," he said weakly.
"What's your name, anyhow?"
"Priam Farll," said Priam Farll, without thinking.
"Off his nut, evidently!" murmured one of the young men contemptuously. "Come on, Stan. Don't let's miss that anthem, for this cuss." And off they both went.
Then a youthful policeman appeared, putting on his helmet as he quitted the fane.
"What's all this?" asked the policeman, in the assured tone of one who had the forces of the Empire behind him.
"He's been making a disturbance in the horgan loft," said the cassock, "and now he says his name's Priam Farll."
"Oh!" said the policeman. "Ho! And how did he get into the organ loft?"
"Don't arsk me," answered the cassock. "He ain't got no ticket."
"Now then, out of it!" said the policeman, taking zealously hold of Priam.
"I'll thank you to leave me alone," said Priam, rebelling with all the pride of his nature against this clutch of the law.
"Oh, you will, will you?" said the policeman. "We'll see about that. We shall just see about that."
And the policeman dragged Priam along the cloister to the muffled music of "He will swallow up death in victory." They had not thus proceeded very far when they met another policeman, an older policeman.
"What's all this?" demanded the older policeman.
"Drunk and disorderly in the Abbey!" said the younger.
"Will you come quietly?" the older policeman asked Priam, with a touch of commiseration.
"I'm not drunk," said Priam fiercely; he was unversed in London, and unaware of the foolishness of reasoning with the watch-dogs of justice.
"Will you come quietly?" the older policeman repeated, this time without any touch of commiseration.
"Yes," said Priam.
And he went quietly. Experience may teach with the rapidity of lightning.
"But where's my hat?" he added after a moment, instinctively stopping.
"Now then!" said the older policeman. "Come on."
He walked between them, striding. Just as they emerged into Dean's Yard, his left hand nervously exploring one of his pockets, on a sudden encountered a piece of cardboard.
"Here's my ticket," he said. "I thought I'd lost it. I've had nothing at all to drink, and you'd better let me go. The whole affair's a mistake."
The procession halted, while the older policeman gazed fascinated at the official document.
"Henry Leek," he read, deciphering the name.
"He's been a-telling every one as he's Priam Farll," grumbled the younger policeman, looking over the other's shoulder.
"I've done no such thing," said Priam promptly.
The elder
