Old Peggy had retailed it to me, with much grisly decoration, on the afternoon following the night of the tempest. The thorns of her mind were stored with a wriggling half-hundred of such tales. By and by I walked out to visit the scene of the tragedy. It was dark and gloomy and still threatening storm. There was little left of the ruin of the night. The fallen branch had been sawed to lengths and carted away, and only its litter remained; the vault had been covered in again with a great slab lifted and brought from one of the precinct pathways that were paved with ancient gravestones; a solitary man was raking and trimming the gravel over the restored surface. The crowds who no doubt had visited the spot during the day were dwindled to a half-dozen morbid idlers, and a sweeping flaw of tempest breaking suddenly from the clouds even as I approached drove the last of these to shelter. I myself scuttled for a long low tunnel that pierced a south wing of the cathedral and promised the best cover available. This was to be reached by way of a double-arched portal which enjoyed the distinction of conveying ill-luck to any who should have the temerity to walk through a certain one of its two openings. Turning when I reached the archway, I saw that the solitary grave-trimmer was running for the same shelter as myself. With head bent to the storm, he bolted through the gate of ill-omen; stopped, recognized his error, hurriedly retraced his steps; spat out the evil and came through the customary opening at slower pace. As he approached me I saw, what I had not noticed before, that he was my friend the sexton of St. John’s. “Good-afternoon,” said I, as he walked under the tunnel, seized off his cap and jerked the rain drops from it. I fancied there was a queer wild look on his face, and at first he hardly seemed to be able to make me out. “Ah!” he said, suddenly. “Good-arternoon to you.” Even then he didn’t look at but beyond me, following with his bloodshot eyes, as it were, the movements of something on the stone wall at my back. “So you’re translated, it appears?” “Eh?” he said, vaguely. “You’re promoted to the yard here, aren’t you?” “I come to oblige Jem Sweet, ars be down wi’ the arsmer,” he said. “That was friendly, anyhow. It was an unchancy task you took upon yourself.” “What isn’t?” he shouted, quite fiercely, all in a moment. “Give me another marn as’ll walk all day wi’ the devil arm in arm, as I does.” “You found him down there, eh?” He took off his cap and flung it with quick violence at the wall behind me, then pounced upon it lying on the ground, as if something were caught underneath it. “My!” he muttered, rising with the air of a schoolboy who has captured a butterfly, and, seeking to investigate his prize, made a frantic clutch in the air, as if it had escaped him. “What’s that?” said I, “a wasp?” “A warsp!” he cried in a sort of furious fright. “Who ever see a pink warsp wi’ a mouth like a purse and blue inside?”