When the clock tolled the hour of midnight the last sound of the bell was prolonged, as if the organ in its softest tones had taken up the note; the music grew louder, until the introit of the Mass for the dead pealed out distinctly. “Requiem æternam dona eis Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis.” Then as he started up in amazement, the door swung open, and the “fetches or doubles” of those who were to die that year, that is, their ghostly likenesses, came out to seek their graves. And there were many whom the boy knew, but last of all came out from the church the form of his benefactor, Richard Whiting, Lord Abbot of Glastonbury. And around his neck there hung a ghastly cord, and close by his side followed Prior and Sub-Prior, and cords were about their necks too. Then the boy grew faint, and knew no more till he awoke, or recovered from his faint, whichever it was, and returning home, undressed, shivering as he did so, and went to bed. When he afterwards told this tale, there were many who refused to believe that he had ever left his bed, and always insisted that he had _dreamt_ the scene in the porch. But if it was a dream, it was not without inspiration. Coming events cast their shadows before. FOOTNOTES [4] See Note B. [5] See Note C. [6] An ancient inventory of the furniture of such a house lies before the writer as he pens these lines. CHAPTER II. _RETROSPECT._ Three centuries and more have rolled away since the dissolution of the monasteries, which once rose in architectural beauty in each district of mediæval England, gladdening the eye of the wayfarer with the assurance of hospitality, and of the poor with that of help and protection. Their pious founders built in marble-- “Built as they Who hoped those stones should see the day When Christ should come; and that those walls Might stand o’er them till judgment calls.” Alas! for such hopes; the tyrant Tudor, taking advantage of the palpable declension of the inmates from their first love, levelled them with the ground, and left the country shorn of such glorious fanes as arose over the conquerors at Battle, or the tombs of the mighty dead at Glastonbury. Yet still they had welcomed the wayfarer and the stranger, tended the sick, taught the young, found labour for the poor, were good masters to their tenants, built bridges, made roads, and were the centres of civilization in their several districts. Two rebellions ruthlessly extinguished in blood--the pilgrimage of grace, and the later rising in Devon and Cornwall--testified to the popular sense of loss when the servile courtier, ever the tyrant at home, had succeeded to the gentle old monks. For all that is now done for the poor, and too often in a wooden kind of way by workhouses, hospitals, and the like, was then done by the monasteries, and their suppression was a cruel wrong to the poor.