The little stone Saint occupied a retired niche in a side aisle of the
old cathedral. No one quite remembered who he had been, but that in a
way was a guarantee of respectability. At least so the Goblin said. The
Goblin was a very fine specimen of quaint stone carving, and lived up in
the corbel on the wall opposite the niche of the little Saint. He was
connected with some of the best cathedral folk, such as the queer
carvings in the choir stalls and chancel screen, and even the gargoyles
high up on the roof. All the fantastic beasts and manikins that sprawled
and twisted in wood or stone or lead overhead in the arches or away down
in the crypt were in some way akin to him; consequently he was a person
of recognised importance in the cathedral world.
The little stone Saint and the Goblin got on very well together, though
they looked at most things from different points of view. The Saint was
a philanthropist in an old fashioned way; he thought the world, as he saw
it, was good, but might be improved. In particular he pitied the church
mice, who were miserably poor. The Goblin, on the other hand, was of
opinion that the world, as he knew it, was bad, but had better be let
alone. It was the function of the church mice to be poor.
"All the same," said the Saint, "I feel very sorry for them."
"Of course you do," said the Goblin; "it's _your_ function to feel sorry
for them. If they were to leave off being poor you couldn't fulfil your
functions. You'd be a sinecure."
He rather hoped that the Saint would ask him what a sinecure meant, but
the latter took refuge in a stony silence. The Goblin might be right,
but still, he thought, he would like to do something for the church mice
before winter came on; they were so very poor.
Whilst he was thinking the matter over he was startled by something
falling between his feet with a hard metallic clatter. It was a bright
new thaler; one of the cathedral jackdaws, who collected such things, had
flown in with it to a stone cornice just above his niche, and the banging
of the sacristy door had startled him into dropping it. Since the
invention of gunpowder the family nerves were not what they had been.
"What have you got there?" asked the Goblin.
"A silver thaler," said the Saint. "Really," he continued, "it is most
fortunate; now I can do something for the church mice."
"How will you manage it?" asked the Goblin.
The Saint considered.
"I will appear in a vision to the vergeress who sweeps the floors. I
will tell her that she will find a silver thaler between my feet, and
that she must take it and buy a measure of corn and put it on my shrine.
When she finds the money she will know that it was a true dream, and she
will take care to follow my directions. Then the mice will have food all
the winter."
"Of course _you_ can do that," observed the Goblin. "Now, _I_ can only
appear to people after they have had a heavy supper of indigestible
things. My opportunities with the vergeress would be limited. There is
some advantage in being a saint after all."
All this while the coin was lying at the Saint's feet. It was clean and
glittering and had the Elector's arms beautifully stamped upon it. The
Saint began to reflect that such an opportunity was too rare to be
hastily disposed of. Perhaps indiscriminate charity might be harmful to
the church mice. After all, it was their function to be poor; the Goblin
had said so, and the Goblin was generally right.
"I've been thinking," he said to that personage, "that perhaps it would
be really better if I ordered a thaler's worth of candles to be placed on
my shrine instead of the corn."
He often wished, for the look of the thing, that people would sometimes
burn candles at his shrine; but as they had forgotten who he was it was
not considered a profitable speculation to pay him that attention.
"Candles would be more orthodox," said the Goblin.
"More orthodox, certainly," agreed the Saint, "and the mice could have
the ends to eat; candle-ends are most fattening."
The Goblin was too well bred to wink; besides, being a stone goblin, it
was out of the question.
* * * * *
"Well, if it ain't there, sure enough!" said the vergeress next morning.
She took the shining coin down from the dusty niche and turned it over
and over in her grimy hands. Then she put it to her mouth and bit it.
"She can't be going to eat it," thought the Saint, and fixed her with his
stoniest stare.
"Well," said the woman, in a somewhat shriller key, "who'd have thought
it! A saint, too!"
Then she did an unaccountable thing. She hunted an old piece of tape out
of her pocket, and tied to crosswise, with a big loop, round the thaler,
and hung it round the neck of the little Saint.
Then she went away.
"The only possible explanation," said the Goblin, "is that it's a bad
one."
* * * * *
"What is that decoration your neighbour is wearing?" asked a wyvern that
was wrought into the capital of an adjacent pillar.
The Saint was ready to cry with mortification, only, being of stone, he
couldn't.
"It's a coin of--ahem!--fabulous value," replied the Goblin tactfully.
And the news went round the Cathedral that the shrine of the little stone
Saint had been enriched by a priceless offering.
"After all, it's something to have the conscience of a goblin," said the
Saint to himself.
The church mice were as poor as ever. But that was their function.