The culprit upon knocking at the ring affixed to the north door was admitted without delay, and after confessing his crime, with every minute circumstance connected with it, the whole of which was committed to writing in the presence of witnesses, a bell in the Galilee tower ringing all the while, to give notice to the town that some one had taken refuge in the church, there was put upon him a black gown with a yellow cross upon its left shoulder, as a badge of Cuthbert, whose _girth_, or peace, he had claimed. When thirty-seven days had elapsed, if no pardon could be obtained, the malefactor, after certain ceremonies before the shrine, solemnly abjured his native land forever, and was straightway, by the agency of the intervening parish constables, conveyed to the coast, bearing in his hand a white wooden cross, and was sent out of the kingdom by the first ship which sailed after his arrival. The old knocker remains at its post, though centuries have passed since it last rendered its sacred service, and was tremblingly grasped by a panting fugitive. We assumed this role, but, fortunately or unfortunately, could not knock as a genuine culprit could. The Old Galilee is a room perhaps 55 feet by 75, divided by columns and arches into five sections. The architecture is decorated Norman, finely mixed with Early English, the Norman, or circular arches resting on rather slender columns. It was built by Bishop Pudsey in the twelfth century. In this chapel are the remains of the Venerable Bede, and more venerated dust reposes not in any cathedral. He was probably born in Monkton in Durham, in 672, and died at Girvy, May 26, 735. He was educated in a monastery, and his learning and ability as a scholar and writer were remarkable. He was ordained a priest at the age of thirty. His "Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation" was a work of great labor, and is still the most reliable authority on the early period of which it treats. He compiled it from chronicles and traditions handed down in the convents, and from miscellaneous testimony; and it is remarkably free from those exaggerations and contortions which fill many books of later monkish historians. His other literary labors were extraordinary, and his devotion to such work was singularly enthusiastic. It is stated that during his final illness, he continued to dictate to an amanuensis the conclusion of a translation of St. John's Gospel into Anglo Saxon; and that as soon as he had completed the last sentence he requested the assistant to place him on the floor of his cell, where he said a short prayer, and expired as the last words passed his lips. In the cathedral are copies of his "Historia Ecclesiastica," as first printed in German in 1475; others are in the British Museum and in Paris. They were translated from the Latin into Anglo Saxon by King Alfred in 1644, and into English in 1722,--and many times since, the latest translation having been made in 1871.