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 recognized
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 gun powder 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 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 gusty 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 it 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.