The little musical
bell above the chancel-arch seemed always ringing: and still that figure
haunted me like a nightmare, ever coming in and going out about its
priestly calling--and I still in my cell! If it should be he!--so close to
her! I shuddered at the thought; and, just because it was so intolerable,
it clung to me, and tormented me, and kept me awake at nights, till I
became utterly unable to study quietly, and spent hours at the narrow
window, watching for the very figure I loathed to see.
And then a Gothic school-house rose at the churchyard end, and troops of
children poured in and out, and women came daily for alms; and when the
frosts came on, every morning I saw a crowd, and soup carried away in
pitchers, and clothes and blankets given away; the giving seemed endless,
boundless; and I thought of the times of the Roman Empire and the
"sportula," when the poor had got to live upon the alms of the rich, more
and more, year by year--till they devoured their own devourers, and the end
came; and I shuddered. And yet it was a pleasant sight, as every new church
is to the healthy-minded man, let his religious opinions be what they
may.
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