"
Away went the bishop as quickly as the gloom allowed him, and away went
the other two in his wake. Arrived at the passage which led from the
cloisters to the deanery garden they groped their way to the end--only
to find the door closed and locked.
"Well, this is a pleasant situation!" exclaimed the bishop, his tone
betraying amusement as well as annoyance; and with his own prelatical
hands he pummelled at the door, and shouted with his own prelatical
voice. When the bishop was tired, Jenkins and Ketch began to pummel and
to shout, and they pummelled and shouted till their knuckles were sore
and their throats were hoarse. It was all in vain. The garden
intervened between them and the deanery, and they could not be heard.
It certainly was a pretty situation, as the prelate remarked. The Right
Reverend the Lord Bishop of Helstonleigh, ranking about fifth, by
precedence, on the episcopal bench, locked up ignominiously in the
cloisters of Helstonleigh, with Ketch the porter, and Jenkins the
steward's clerk; likely, so far as appearances might be trusted, to
have to pass the night there! The like had never yet been heard of.
The bishop went to the south gate, and tried the keys himself: the
bishop went to the west gate and tried them there; the bishop stamped
about the west quadrangle, hoping to stamp upon the missing keys; but
nothing came of it. Ketch and Jenkins attended him--Ketch grumbling in
the most angry terms that he dared, Jenkins in humble silence.
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