This was a most unprecedented and most unexpected event; and it gave rise, as may be guessed it would, to a mighty concatenation of stupendous occurrences. The spirit of the Perpetual Curate was roused, and his genius, too, as was proved by his statesmanlike blow at the ring-leader of the rustic confederacy; and the spirit of the parishioners was roused likewise, for they were determined that, although the parson might appoint a new clerk, they would stick by the old one. The ensuing Sunday, accordingly, brought forth the strange anomaly of _one_ parson with _two_ clerks, reading the church service in the ancient aisle of Stow! Moreover, when the _chosen_ of the Perpetual Curate was beheld to be the egregious tale-bearer and notorious sycophant, Spurr, who was no adept at the letters of his prayer-book, the churchwarden and parishioners were alike wroth, and resolved, still more resolutely, on abiding by their old respected utterer of amens, Clerk William Middleton, the son of Clerk Gervase. Thus it fell out that Clerk Spurr,--we know not, nor care we, what was his pronomen, or "christened" name, as they call it in Lincolnshire; whether it were Moses or Mahershalalhashbaz, Nahum or Nebuchadnezzar, Jeremiah or Judas Iscariot, we cannot tell, nor doth it concern the dignity of this our record, to say with positiveness,--for the fellow was but as a buzzard to a sparrow-hawk, when compared with the rightful clerk; but thus it fell out, that Clerk Spurr was called "the Parson's Clerk," while Clerk William Middleton, the son of Clerk Gervase, bore the creditable and legitimate epithet of "the Parish Clerk." And, then, it came to pass that, when announcements of christenings, burials, or marriages, had to be made, the parishioners, in the spirit of their preference, commissioned their own clerk, "the Parish Clerk," to inform his Reverence the Perpetual Curate of the same, and to request the fulfilment of the accustomed rites. But the cooler the parishioners grew towards "the Parson's Clerk," the hotter did the parson grow towards his parishioners. He scorned to compromise his sacerdotal dignity by attempting a reconciliation with the unruly spirits by which he was surrounded: he spurned the ignoble example of the ancient worthies who thought the first and last part of Christianity was meekness and long-suffering; and he meditated a still more afflictive stroke of retaliation on his spiritual rebels. Clerk William Middleton conveyed a request to his spiritual superior from a sorrowing villager to bury his dead child;--but the grand Perpetual Curate would not fulfil the request because it was brought him by the discarded, though old, hereditary Amen,--and adjourned, in dudgeon, to the hamlet of Coates,--while the poor villager's child was put into its grave,--as every child of such rebels deserved to be put,--_like a dog_,--without a prayer being read, or a hope expressed about its resurrection!