Sir Guy was a brave knight, and a tall; but he was no scholar. "Alas! my poor Sister!" sighed Ingoldsby. "Alas! my poor Mistress!" sobbed Beatrice. Sir Guy neither sighed nor sobbed;--his grief was too deep-seated for outward manifestation. "And how long, Doctor--?" The afflicted husband could not finish the sentence. Doctor Butts withdrew his hand from the wrist of the dying lady; he pointed to the horologe; scarcely a quarter of its sand remained in the upper moiety. Again he shook his head; the eye of the patient waxed dimmer, the rattling in the throat increased. "What's become of Father Francis?" whimpered Beatrice. "The last consolations of the church--" suggested Everard. A darker shade came over the brow of Sir Guy. "Where _is_ the Confessor?" continued his grieving brother-in-law. "In the pantry," cried Marion Hacket pertly, as she tripped down stairs in search of that venerable ecclesiastic;--"in the pantry, I warrant me."--The bower-woman was not wont to be in the wrong;--in the pantry was the holy man discovered,--at his devotions. "_Pax vobiscum!_" said Father Francis, as he entered the chamber of death. "_Vita brevis!_" retorted Doctor Butts:--he was not a man to be browbeat out of his Latin,--and by a paltry Friar Minim, too. Had it been a Bishop, indeed,--or even a mitred Abbot;--but a miserable Franciscan! "_Benedicite!_" said the friar. "_Ars longa!_" returned the Leech. Doctor Butts adjusted the tassels of his falling band; drew his short sad-coloured cloak closer around him; and, grasping his cross-handled walking-staff, stalked majestically out of the apartment.--Father Francis had the field to himself. The worthy chaplain hastened to administer the last rites of the church. To all appearance he had little time to lose; as he concluded, the dismal toll of the passing-bell sounded from the belfry tower; little Hubert, the bandy-legged sacristan, was pulling with all his might.--It was a capital contrivance that same passing-bell:--which of the Urbans or Innocents invented it is a query; but, whoever he was, he deserved well of his country and of Christendom. Ah! our ancestors were not such fools, after all, as we, their degenerate children, conceit them to have been. The passing bell! a most solemn warning to imps of every description, is not to be regarded with impunity: the most impudent _Succubus_ of them all dare as well dip his claws in holy water, as come within the verge of its sound. Old Nick himself, if he sets any value at all upon his tail, had best convey himself clean out of hearing, and leave the way open to Paradise. Little Hubert continued pulling with all his might, and St. Peter began to look out for a customer.