“From midnight to two o’clock,” answered the priest.  “The later watches are arranged.”

“It is understood,” I said, after a pause.

And the priest departed, charged with my compliments to the Lord Bishop.

I had a horror of the duty which had been thrust upon me.  It went against not merely my inclinations but my instincts.  However, there was only one thing to do, and of course I did it.

At five minutes to twelve I was knocking at the north door of the cathedral.  A sacristan, who carried in his hand a long lighted taper, admitted me at once.  Save for this taper and four candles which stood at the four corners of the bier, the vast interior was in darkness.

The sacristan silently pointed to the chancel, and I walked hesitatingly across the gloomy intervening space, my footsteps echoing formidably in the silence.  Two young priests stood, one at either side of the lofty bier.  One of them bowed to me, and I took his place.  He disappeared into the ambulatory.  The other priest was praying for the dead, a slight frown on his narrow white brow.  His back was half-turned towards the corpse, and he did not seem to notice me in any way.

I folded my arms, and as some relief from the uncanny and troublous thoughts which ran in my head I looked about me.  I could not bring myself to gaze on the purple cloth which covered the remains of Alresca.  We were alone—­the priest, Alresca, and I—­and I felt afraid.  In vain I glanced round, in order to reassure myself, at the stained-glass windows, now illumined by September starlight, at the beautiful carving of the choir-stalls, at the ugly rococo screen.  I was afraid, and there was no disguising my fear.

Suddenly the clock chimes of the belfry rang forth with startling resonance, and twelve o’clock struck upon the stillness.  Then followed upon the bells a solemn and funereal melody.

“How comes that?” I asked the priest, without stopping to consider whether I had the right to speak during my vigil.

“It is the carilloneur,” my fellow watcher said, interrupting his whispered and sibilant devotions, and turning to me, as it seemed, unwillingly.  “Have you not heard it before?  Every evening since the death he has played it at midnight in memory of Alresca.”  Then he resumed his office.

The minutes passed, or rather crawled by, and, if anything, my uneasiness increased.  I suffered all the anxieties and tremors which those suffer who pass wakeful nights, imagining every conceivable ill, and victimized by the most dreadful forebodings.  Through it all I was conscious of the cold of the stone floor penetrating my boots and chilling my feet....

The third quarter after one struck, and I began to congratulate myself that the ordeal by the bier was coming to an end.  I looked with a sort of bravado into the dark, shadowed distances of the fane, and smiled at my nameless trepidations.  And then, as my glance sought to penetrate the gloom of the great western porch, I grew aware that a man stood there.  I wished to call the attention of the priest to this man, but I could not—­I could not.