The floor was six feet below the level of the surrounding ground and frightfully damp.

It had been examined over and over again by experts during the past forty or fifty years, and from the first they pronounced it a hopeless case, so that it was never restored.
The interior, right down to the time of demolition, was like that of most country churches of a century ago, with the old black worm-eaten pews, in which the worshippers shut themselves up as if in their own houses or castles.

On account of the damp we were haunted by toads.

You smile, sir, but it was no smiling matter for me during my first year as vicar, when I discovered that it was the custom here to keep pet toads in the church.

It sounds strange and funny, no doubt, but it is a fact that all the best people in the parish had one of these creatures, and it was customary for the ladies to bring it a weekly supply of provisions--bits of meat, hard-boiled eggs chopped up, and earth-worms, and whatever else they fancied it would like--in their reticules.