For some time each stood following out in his own mind the train of thought which these words suggested. Matthew was the first to break silence, by begging the Vicar kindly to go with him into the room above where they were standing, as he wished there to ask a favour of him. Matthew returned into the church to find the key of the chamber, and Mr. Ambrose at once recognized the volume which he had left on the stone seat of the porch, as that from which Lizzie was used to read when she sat beside the old Shepherd on the neighbouring hill. He took it up, and, opening it at the Burial Office, he found there a little curl of lovely fair hair marking the place. The page was still wet--it was the dew of evening, gentle tears of love and sorrow shed by one whose night was calmly and peacefully coming on. The old man soon returned with the key, and, bearing the lantern, led the way up a narrow, winding stone staircase, formed in the masonry of a large buttress, to the little chamber. As soon as they had reached it, he said, "Before I beg my favour, Mr. Ambrose, I should much like you to tell me something about this old room. Ever since I was a boy it has been a sort of lumber-room, but I suppose it was not built for that?" "Well, Matthew, there is not much here to throw light upon the history of this particular chamber; but I will tell you what I can about such places generally. The room is most commonly, but not correctly, called the _parvise_[28]. The word _parvise_, or _paradise_, properly only applies to an open court adjoining a church, and surrounded by cloisters; but in olden times a room in a private house was sometimes called a paradise[29], and hence, I suppose, the name came to be used for the porch-room of the church. It was also called the _priest's chamber_[30]; and such, I think, was the room in which we now are. You see it is provided with a nice little fire-place[31], and it is a comfortable little place to live in. Sometimes it was called the _treasury_[32], or record-room, because the parish records and church books were kept in it; or the _library_[33], from its being appropriated for the reception of a church or parochial library. There are many of these chambers furnished with valuable libraries which have been bequeathed from time to time for this purpose. It is also evident, from the remains of an altar and furniture connected with it, that not infrequently it was built for a _chapel_[34]. Occasionally it has been used as the _parish school_[35]; and I have heard that in some of the eastern counties poor people have occasionally, in cases of extreme distress, claimed sanctuary or refuge, both in the porch and parvise, and lived there undisturbed for some weeks together. But latterly, in many places, the parish clerk or sexton has been located in the parvise, that he may watch the churchyard and protect the church[36]; and I am inclined to think this is a much more sensible thing to do, than to