One could hear the rhythmical, faint clangour of the metal.

And then, intensely sudden, away in the west gallery, but almost as if from the battlements of heaven, pealed out silver trumpets in a fanfare.

The censers flew high in time with it, and the sweet clouds of smoke, caught by the coloured sunlight of the rich painted windows, unfolded in the air of the sanctuary.

Lights moved and danced, and the space before the altar filled with the white of the men and boys who should move in the procession.

Again and again those trumpets rang out, and hardly had the last echoes died away than the organ thundered the _Pange Lingua_, as a priest in cloth of gold turned from the altar with the glittering monstrance in his hand.