'I'll make it quite clear.' The attorney's tall forehead had a little pink flush over it at this moment, and he was looking down a little and poking the base of Sir William de Braundon's monument with the point of his umbrella. 'I wish, Captain Lake, to be perfectly frank, and, as I said, above-board. You'll want the money, and you must make up your mind to sell Five Oaks.' Captain Lake shifted his foot, as if he had found it on a sudden on a hot flag. 'Sell Five Oaks--that's fourteen hundred a year,' said he. 'Hardly so much, but nearly, perhaps.' 'Forty-three thousand pounds were offered for it. Old Chudworth offered that about ten years ago.' 'Of course, Captain Lake, if you are looking for a fancy price from me I must abandon the idea. I was merely supposing a dealing between friends, and in that sense I ventured to name the extreme limit to which I could go. Little more than five per cent, for my money, if I insure--and possibly to defend an action before I've been six months in possession. I think my offer will strike you as a _great_ one, considering the posture of affairs. Indeed, I apprehend, my friends will hardly think me justified in offering so much.' The sexton was walking back and forward near the door, making the best clatter he decently could, and wondering the Captain and Lawyer Larkin could find no better place to talk in than the church. 'In a moment--in a moment,' said the lawyer, signalling to him to be quiet, as loftily as if chapel, hall, and sexton were his private property. It was one of those moments into which a good deal of talk is fitted, and which seem somewhat of the longest to those who await its expiration. The chapel was growing dark, and its stone and marble company of bygone Wylders and Brandons were losing themselves in shadow. Part of the periwig and cheek of Sir Marcus Brandon still glimmered whitish, as at a little distance did also the dim marble face and arm of the young Countess of Lydingworth, mourning these hundred and thirty years over her dead baby. Sir William Wylder, in ruff, rosettes, and full dress of James I.'s fashion, on his back, defunct, with children in cloaks kneeling at head and foot, was hardly distinguishable; and the dusky crimson and tarnished gold had gone out of view till morning. The learned Archbishop Brandon, a cadet, who filled the see of York in his day, and was the only unexceptionably godly personage of that long line, was praying, as usual, at his desk--perhaps to the saints and Virgin, for I believe he was before the Reformation--in beard and skull-cap, as was evident from the black profile of head and uplifted hands, against the dim sky seen through the chapel window. A dusky glow from the west still faintly showed Hans Holbein's proud 'Elector,' in the Brandon window, fading, with Death himself, and the dread inscription, 'Princeps induetur maerore,' into utter darkness.