Avon Fantasy Reader No. 12 — page 109: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

" asperity, “that is, for thirty years I've been known as Dr. Ayloff, and I shall be obliged, Mr. Dean, if you would kindly humour me in that matter. And as to the pulpit (which I've preached from for thirty years, though I don’t insist on that), all I'll say is, | knot you're doing wrong in moving it.” “But what sense could there be, my dear Doctor, in leaving it where it is, when we're fitting up the rest of the choir in a totally different style? What reason could be given—apart from the look of the thing?” “Reason! reason!” said old Dr. Ayloff, “if you young men—if I may say so without any disrespect, Mr. Dean—if you'd only listen to reason a little, and not be always asking for it, we should get on better. But there, I've said my say.” The old gentleman hobbled off, and as it proved, never entered the Cathedral again. The scason—it was a hot summer—turned sickly on a sudden. Dr. Aylotf was one of the first to go, with some affection of the muscles of the thorax, which took him painfully at night. And at many services the number of choirmen and boys was very thin. Meanwhile the pulpit had been done away with. In fact, the sound- ing-board (part of which still cxists as a table in a summer-house in the palace garden) was taken down within an hour or two of Dr. Ayloff’s protest. The removal of the base—not effected without con- siderable trouble disclosed to view, greatly to the exultation of the restoring party, an altar-tomb—the tomb, of course, to which Worby had attracted Lake’s attention that same evening. Much fruitless research was expended in attempts to identify the occupant; from that day to this he has never had a name put to him. The structure had been most carefwly boxed in under the pulpit-base, so that such slight ornament us it possessed was not defaced; only on the north side of it there was what looked like an injury; a gap between two of the slabs composing the side. It might be two or three inches across. Palmer, the mason, was directed to fill it up in a week's time, when he came to do some other small jobs near that part of the choir. The season was undoubtedly a very trying one. Whether the church was built on a site that had once been a marsh, as was suggested, or _for whatever reason, the residents in its immediate neighborhood had, many of them, but little enjoyment of the exquisite sunny days and the calm nights of August and September. To several of the older people--Dr. Aylofl, among others, as we have seen—-the summer roved downright fatal, but even among the younger, few escaped either a sojourn in bed for a matter of wecks, or at the least, a brood- ing sense of oppression, accompanied by hateful nightmares. Grad- ually there formulated itself a suspicion—which grew into a convic- tion—that the alterations in the Cathedral had something to say in the matter. The widow of a former old verger, a pensioner of the Chapter of Southminster, was visited by dreams, which she retailed to her friends, of a shape that slipped out of the little door of the south 10 i. comicbooks.com