There was a crackling sound in the night on the Cathedral roof and a noise as of falling masonry. The belfry jackdaw said the frost was affecting the fabric, and as he had experienced many frosts it must have been so. In the morning it was seen that the Figure of the Lost Soul had toppled from its cornice and lay now in a broken mass on the dust-heap outside the verger’s lodge.

‘It is just as well,’ cooed the fat pigeons, after they had peered at the matter for some minutes; ‘now we shall have a nice angel put up there.

Certainly they will put an angel there.’

‘After joy…sorrow,’ rang out the great bell.