When I asked him how he could reconcile the difference between Mrs. Proudie and the other lady--how he could reconcile Mrs. Proudie's death in _The Last Chronicle_ with the other's still active life, he told me that he had never read any of Trollope's books: the only writings of Trollope that had come under his cognizance were the official reports which he made to the head of the Department! Beautiful to the last, and ruling to the last, _our_ Mrs. Proudie survived the published record of the other Mrs. Proudie by nearly thirty years. I write this chapter sitting on a sofa which I bought out of the Palace. The fact that the receipt of my cheque was signed by the Bishop and not by the lady, suggests that in financial matters his lordship was permitted to discharge the humblest of clerical duties. In Broadminster there has never been a rumour of a Mrs. Proudie; but occasionally there comes a discordant note from the belfry of the Cathedral. Only a quick ear can detect it, but having detected it, one is conscious of an impression of uneasiness, and asks oneself or anybody else if it is possible that all is not well in the Close. What sounds like the merest tinkle of discord outside Broadminster reverberates throughout the Close, causing uneasiness and even perturbation at times. During the past three years there have been two threatenings of huge upheavals in Minster circles. The rumblings of an earthquake were heard by some people of acute hearing, and the local seismometer--her name is Lady Birnam--foretold a cataclysm. But happily the centre of the disturbance passed away in another direction, and the foundations of the Cathedral remained intact. II.--THE INNOVATORS The volcanic force which caused all the alarm was a young clergyman who, by reason of his personal merits and his relationship to the Dean, became the most minor of all the canons, and probably the most pleasing. But before he had been a year in attendance it was rumoured that he had views, and no clergyman with views had ever been associated with the services at the Minster. There have been clergymen who took a lively interest in landscape photography--even colour photography--and others who had rubbed with their own hands some of the finest monumental brasses in the country. A prebendary went so far in horticulture as to stand godfather to a new rose (h.p.), and a precentor who devised an automatic reel--a fishing-rod reel, not the terpsichorean--but no dignitary had previously been known to develop views on the lines adopted by this Canon Mowbray, for his views had an intimate connection with the Church Service.