The Channings. Henry Wood

of summer, it was his habit to close the cloister gates before supper-time; but as Mr. Ketch liked to take that meal early—that is to say, at eight o’clock—and, as dusk, for at least four months in the year, obstinately persisted in putting itself off to a later hour, in spite of his growling, and as he might not shut up before dusk, he had no resource but to take his supper first and lock up afterwards. The “lodge” was a quaint abode, of one room only, built in an obscure nook of the cathedral, near the grand entrance. He was pursuing his meal after his own peculiar custom: eating, drinking, and grumbling.

      “It’s worse nor leather, this cheese! Selling it to a body for double-Gloucester! I’d like to double them as made it. Eight-pence a pound!—and short weight beside! I wonder there ain’t a law passed to keep down the cost o’ provisions!”

      A pause, given chiefly to grunting, and Mr. Ketch resumed:—

      “This bread’s rougher nor a bear’s hide! Go and ask for new, and they palms you off with stale. They’ll put a loaf a week old into the oven to hot up again, and then sell it to you for new! There ought to be a criminal code passed for hanging bakers. They’re all cheats. They mixes up alum, and bone-dust, and plaster of Paris, and—Drat that door! Who’s kicking at it now?”

      No one was kicking. Some one was civilly knocking. The door was pushed slightly open, and the inoffensive face of Mr. Joseph Jenkins appeared in the aperture.

      “I say, Mr. Ketch,” began he in a mild tone of deprecation, “whatever is it that you have gone and done?”

      “What d’ye mean?” growled old Ketch. “Is this a way to come and set upon a gentleman in his own house? Who taught you manners, Joe Jenkins?”

      “You have been repeating what I mentioned last night about Lady Augusta’s son getting the seniorship,” said Jenkins, coming in and closing the door.

      “You did say it,” retorted Mr. Ketch.

      “I know I did. But I did not suppose you were going to repeat it again.”

      “If it was a secret, why didn’t you say so?” asked Mr. Ketch.

      “It was not exactly a secret, or Lady Augusta would not have mentioned it before me,” remonstrated Joe. “But it is not the proper thing, for me to come out of Mr. Galloway’s office, and talk of anything I may have heard said in it by his friends, and then for it to get round to his ears again! Put it to yourself, Mr. Ketch, and say whether you would like it.”

      “What did you talk of it for, then?” snarled Ketch, preparing to take a copious draught of ale.

      “Because I thought you and father were safe. You might both have known better than to speak of it out of doors. There is sure to be a commotion over it.”

      “Miserable beer! Brewed out of ditch-water!”

      “Young Mr. Huntley came to me to-day, to know the rights and the wrongs of it—as he said,” continued Joseph. “He spoke to Mr. Galloway about it afterwards—though I must say he was kind enough not to bring in my name; only said, in a general way, that he had ‘heard’ it. He is an honourable young gentleman, is that Huntley. He vows the report shall be conveyed to the dean.”

      “Serve ‘em right!” snapped the porter. “If the dean does his duty, he’ll order a general flogging for the school, all round. It’ll do ‘em good.”

      “Galloway did not say much—except that he knew what he should do, were he Huntley’s or Channing’s father. Which I took to mean that, in his opinion, there ought to be an inquiry instituted.”

      “And you know there ought,” said Mr. Ketch.

      “I know! I’m sure I don’t know,” was the mild answer. “It is not my place to reflect upon my superiors, Mr. Ketch—to say they should do this, or they should do that. I like to reverence them, and to keep a civil tongue in my head.”

      “Which is what you don’t do. If I knowed who brewed this beer I’d enter an action again him, for putting in no malt.”

      “I would not have had this get about for any money!” resumed Jenkins. “Neither you nor father shall ever catch me opening my lips again.”

      “Keep ‘em shut then,” growled old Ketch.

      Mr. Ketch leisurely finished his supper, and the two continued talking until dusk came on—almost dark; for the porter, churl though he was, liked a visitor as well as any one—possibly as a vent for his temper. He did not often find one who would stand it so meekly as Joe Jenkins. At length Mr. Jenkins lifted himself off the shut-up press bedstead on which he had been perched, and prepared to depart.

      “Come along of me while I lock up,” said Ketch, somewhat less ungraciously than usual.

      Mr. Jenkins hesitated. “My wife will be wondering what has become of me; she’ll blow me up for keeping supper waiting,” debated he, aloud. “But—well, I don’t mind going with you this once, for company’s sake,” he added in his willingness to be obliging.

      The two large keys, one at each end of a string, were hung up just within the lodge door; they belonged to the two gates of the cloisters. Old Ketch took them down and went out with Jenkins, merely closing his own door; he rarely fastened it, unless he was going some distance.

      Very dark were the enclosed cloisters, as they entered by the west gate. It was later than the usual hour of closing, and it was, moreover, a gloomy evening, the sky overcast. They went through the cloisters to the south gate, Ketch grumbling all the way. He locked it, and then turned back again.

      Arrived about midway of the west quadrangle, the very darkest part in all the cloisters, and the most dreary, Jenkins suddenly startled his companion by declaring there was a light in the burial-ground.

      “Come along!” growled Ketch. “You’ll say there’s corpse-candles there next.”

      “It is only a little spark, like,” said Jenkins, halting. “I should not wonder but it is one of those pretty, innocent glowworms.”

      He leaned his arms upon the mullioned frame of the open Gothic window, raised himself on tiptoe to obtain as complete a view as was possible, and pushed his head out to reconnoitre the grave-yard. Mr. Ketch shuffled on; the keys, held somewhat loosely in his hand by the string, clanking together.

      “Be you going to stop there all night?” he called out, when he had gone a few paces, half turning round to speak.

      At that moment a somewhat startling incident occurred. The keys were whisked out of Mr. Ketch’s hand, and fell, or appeared to fall, with a clatter on the flags at his feet. He turned his anger upon Jenkins.

      “Now then, you senseless calf! What did you do that for?”

      “Did you speak?” asked Jenkins, taking his elbows from the distant window-frame, and approaching.

      Mr. Ketch felt a little staggered. His belief had been that Jenkins had come up silently, and dashed the keys from his hand; but Jenkins, it appeared, had not left the window. However, like too many other cross-grained spirits, he persisted in venting blame upon him.

      “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, to play an old man such a trick?”

      “I have played no trick,” said Jenkins. “I thought I saw a glowworm, and I stopped to look; but I couldn’t see it again. There’s no trick in that.”

      “Ugh!” cried the porter in his wrath. “You took and clutched the keys from me, and throwed ‘em on the ground! Pick ‘em up.”

      “Well, I never heard the like!” said Jenkins. “I was not within yards and yards of you. If you dropped the keys it was no fault of mine.” But, being a peaceably-inclined man, he stooped and found the keys.

      The porter grunted. An inner current of conviction rose in his heart that he must undoubtedly have dropped them, though he could have declared at the time that they were mysteriously snatched from him. He seized the string firmly now, and hobbled on to the west door, abusing Jenkins all the way.

      They arrived at the west door, which was gained