"For though within the Priory the fare was scant and thin, The Canon's house it stood without;--he kept good cheer within; Unto the best he prest each guest, with free and jovial look, And Ellen Bean ruled his _cuisine_.--He called her 'Nelly Cook.'" It is not a very proper story that the King's Scholar unfolds; of how a "niece" of the Canon comes to stay with him, and arouses the jealousy of the good-looking cook, whose affections that "merry eye" of the Canon had captured. Nell Cook thereupon successfully poisons the Canon and the strange lady with "some nasty doctor's stuff," with which she flavours a pie destined for the Canonical table, and the two are found as the Scholar tells: "The Canon's head lies on the bed,--his niece lies on the floor! They are as dead as any nail that is in any door!" Nell Cook, for her crime, says Tom Ingoldsby, adapting to his literary uses the legend long current in Canterbury, was buried alive beneath one of the great paving-stones of the "Dark Entry"; when, local history does not inform us: But one thing's clear--that's all the year, on every Friday night, Throughout that Entry dark doth roam Nell Cook's unquiet sprite. And whoever meets Nell Cook is bound to die some untimeous death within the year! Certainly, the Dark Entry is not a place greatly frequented after nightfall, even nowadays--but that is perhaps less by reason of superstitious fears than because it leads to nowhere in particular. CHAPTER IV THE CATHEDRAL: THE MURDER OF BECKET It is by the south porch that the Cathedral is entered. Let none suppose this to be the veritable Cathedral that Becket knew; that was replaced, piece by piece, in the succeeding centuries, all save the Norman transept where he met his fate. The nave, by whose lofty, aspiring perspective we advance, was built in 1380 upon the site of that of the twelfth century. According to the testimony of the time, it was in a ruinous condition. Conceive, if you can, the likelihood of one of those particularly massive Norman naves like those of Tewkesbury and Gloucester, which this resembled, becoming ruinous! The more probable truth of the matter is that the feeling of the time had grown inimical to those cavernous interiors of the older architects, and sought any excuse for tearing them down and building in their stead in the lightsome character of the Perpendicular period.