torrent that shall burst from the rookery,
For the Lord is a Great God: sinking, swelling,
bourdon, trumpet, great organ, every
silver pipe, large and small, braying out that
text. A lull once more: Silbermann is quiet
again, and organist turning in his rookery,
hears far below, faint voice accents. Some
one is preaching.

He does not, perhaps, know (being of all men
in the parish the most retiring and incurious
of news), that there has been present all the
service, listening critically to his music, a pert,
smug creature of his own profession. This Mr.
Wilmer Smythe, R.A.M., who is so pert and
smug on his metropolitan connection, has
come down under the cassock of the new
dean. As he had taught in some families
of distinction, General Whitlow's, K.C.B.,
Lord Rufus Penguin's, and others, Lord
Rufus had resolved to put him in as organist
of his own cathedral. The holy man's puffed
cheeks distended even more, as he was told
on arrival, there was one filling the office
already with even higher qualification than
mere competency,—a superior artist, who
could not be dismissed without public
clamour. "Let these agriculturists croak
themselves hoarse," the good dean answered.
"Lord Rufus has my promise, and out this
music–fellow shall go. He is too old for the
work.'' Old he certainly was, running close to
sixty, being lame besides; and yet none more
famous at working fine old Silbermann.
When any new practitioner should get the
handling of that noble Dutchman, unskilled
in his constitution, it would be an ill day
for the parish and the cathedral. No one
knew so well his pulse's fibres, and most
delicate nerves, and what things were best
for the keeping of him in good health. Old
Silbermann was as his child; and not so
tender, perhaps, could he have been to his
own offspring. Nevertheless, out he must
go, the dean said; until persons of weight
(and distinction also) came to him and said
the thing could not be done safely. The
agriculturists, always bull–headed, would not
stand it.

Well, at all events, the dean told Wilmer
Smythe, R.A.M., he might as well stay, as
there was no knowing how matters might go.
Lord Rufus had county friends not far off,
and among these he might make a fair
connection. As good as hinted besides, that
as soon as he could conveniently have the
present organist on the hip—well, no matter
for the present. So, with curled lip and
sneer scarcely repressed, the pert and smug
man hearkened to old Silbermann under his
enemy's fingers. That lip curl was to be
translated, Old–fashioned! Riccoco!
Behind the age. Silbermann was effete and
wheezy. Better a bran new fellow,—hoarse,
strident, shrill. Well, when it came to his
turn they should see.

So, the sermon being now done and all
else concluded, and the glorious army of
white–robed canons having defiled in procession
across the ailse to where they shall
ungracefully drag those garments over their
heads, our organist is now busy playing the
congregation out. Rustling silks, of the
gayest colours and most splendid provincial
finery, stream out below him, while the great
choral tempest is rioting again, blowing a
hurricane among the Silbermann poles and
cordage, making its timbers groan and creak,
and the porch below quiver. So are they
played out, and gather outside about the old
iron–worked gate, waiting for the country
equipages to drive up. They see, too, the new
dean taken up into the august company of
my Lord Rufus Penguin, who shall set him
down at his deanery–house, perhaps to go in
and have a glass of wine. The sun, now very
strong and cheerful, makes the frost into
bright spangles, sending home all cheerful—
all saving our organist, who has played the last
man and woman out, and is locking up Silbermann,
and who is still ruminating upon the
ill–luck of a dear, dear friend, which dear
comrade is at that moment slinking home
—a mean term for a hero of dignity, but still
the fittest for that gait of his—slinking home,
then, to his little canon's tenement by the
most private road. Luckless Maydew!
eating his very heart out for grief and
mortification, to say nothing of what ills he saw
impending. He did not too much love the
new broad–cheeked dignitary, or pray too
heartily for his prosperity; nay, had some
feeling in him of antagonistic and even
bitter kind. For, as we all know, it is not
because a man has the bishop's stamp upon
him, that he gets thereby  a warranted–
sound and virtuous nature. Unhappily, he
is of the same foolish earth as his unclerical
brethren, which will turn red–hot and grow
calcined under strong heat. So it was  with
Reverend Maydew, and he renders reason of
it to our organist, who has followed him
down to the little green–doored tenement for
consolation purposes. It is full time now to
tell that this limping organist's name was
Twingles; tall and ungainly organ–grinder
as ever was, with bad, sunken chest, the
longest ivory fingers—suited excellently for
his trade—and the gentlest heart inside of
that bad chest. And so he comes restlessly
on his consolation errand, and hears his
friend give him reason.

"I cannot bear to think of it," says the
Reverend Maydew, distractedly. "It is next
to utter ruin, for I have not told you all."

Then to his long pale counsellor he
proceeds to tell all. That is to say, how  this
aged parent of his, residing at a distance
with her long race of daughters, had grown
jubilant and exuberant upon the promised
promotion, had on the strength of it—nay,
upon his encouragement—taken up certain
moneys at interest, and sent them out
lavishly for clearance of debts and general
largess. Poor souls! the bare revocal of the