St. George and St. Michael. Volume II

In the midst of a great psalm, on the geyser column of which his / spirit was borne heavenward, young Delaware all of a sudden found / the keys dumb beneath his helpless fingers: the bellows was empty, / the singing thing dead. He called aloud, and his voice echoed / through the empty chapel, but no living response came back. Tom Fool / had grown weary and forsaken him. Disappointed and baffled, he rose / and left the chapel, not immediately from the organ loft, by a door / and a few upward steps through the wall to the minstrels' gallery, / as he had entered, but by the south door into the court, his / readiest way to reach the rooms he occupied with his father, near / the marquis's study. Hardly another door in either court was ever / made fast except this one, which, merely in self-administered / flattery of his own consequence, the conceited sacristan who assumed / charge of the key, always locked at night. But there was no reason / why Delaware should pay any respect to this, or hesitate to remove / the bar securing one-half of the door, without which the lock / retained no hold.

Although Tom had indeed deserted his post, the organist was mistaken / as to the cause and mode of his desertion: oppressed like every one / else with the sultriness of the night, he had fallen fast asleep, / leaning against the organ. The thunder only waked him sufficiently / to render him capable of slipping from the stool on which he had / lazily seated himself as he worked the lever of the bellows, and / stretching himself at full length upon the floor; while the coolness / that by degrees filled the air as the rain kept pouring, made his / sleep sweeter and deeper. He lay and snored till midnight.