The man received the jug, and went off whistling; he had the pleasure of knowing Mr. Ketch and his temper well. That gentleman closed his door with a bang, and proceeded to take out his customary bread and cheese. Not that he had any great love for a bread-and-cheese supper as a matter of fancy: he would very much have preferred something more dainty; only, dainties and Mr. Ketch’s pocket did not agree. “They want to be took down a notch, that public--sending out a man’s beer a quarter afore seven, when it ain’t ordered to come till seven strikes. Much they care if it stops a waiting and flattening! Be I a slave, that I should be forced to swallow my supper afore I want it, just to please them? They have a sight too much custom, that’s what it is.” He took a slight draught of the offending ale, and was critically surveying the loaf, before applying to it that green-handled knife of his, whose elegance you have heard of, when a second summons was heard at the door--a very timid one this time. Mr. Ketch flung down the bread and the knife. “What’s the reason I can’t get a meal in quiet? Who is it?” There was no response to this, beyond a second faint tapping. “Come in!” roared out he. “Pull the string o’ the latch.” But nobody came in, in spite of this lucid direction; and the timid tapping, which seemed to proceed from very small knuckles, was repeated again. Mr. Ketch was fain to go and open it. A young damsel of eight or so, in a tattered tippet, and a large bonnet--probably her mother’s--stood there, curtseying. “Please, sir, Mr. Ketch is wanted.” Mr. Ketch was rather taken to at this strange address, and surveyed the messenger in astonishment. “Who be you? and who wants him?” growled he. “Please, sir, it’s a gentleman as is waiting at the big green gates,” was the reply. “Mr. Ketch is to go to him this minute; he told me to come and say so, and if you didn’t make haste he should be gone.” “Can’t you speak plain?” snarled Ketch. “Who is the gentleman?” “Please, sir, I think it’s the bishop.” This put Ketch in a flutter. The “big green gates” could only have reference to the private entrance to the bishop’s garden, which entrance his lordship used when attending the cathedral. That the bishop was in Helstonleigh, Ketch knew: he had arrived that day, after a short absence: what on earth could he want with _him_? Never doubting, in his hurry, the genuineness of the message, Ketch pulled his door to, and stepped off, the young messenger having already decamped. The green gates were not one minute’s walk from the lodge--though a projecting buttress of the cathedral prevented the one from being in sight of the other--and old Ketch gained them, and looked around.