g-line smoldering from my helper's
cigarette. If that line had burned through it would have dropped me to
the ground from the steeple-top, saddle, lock-block, and all. The man
with the cigarette was so scared he quit smoking for good and all."

Here, in reply to my question, Merrill explained the working of a
lock-block, which is simply a pulley that allows a rope to pass through
it, but will not let it go back. With this block the steeple-climber can
be hauled up easily, but cannot fall, even if the man hauling should let
go the rope. When it is necessary to descend, a pull on the trip-rope
releases a safety-catch and the saddle goes down.

"Do steeple-climbers always work in pairs?" I asked him.

[Illustration: "'THEN MY PARTNER STOOD ON MY SHOULDERS.'"]

"Usually. It would be hard for one man to do a steeple alone. There are
lots of places where you must have some one to fasten a rope or hold the
end of a plank or pass you something. Besides, it wouldn't be good for a
man's mind to be spending days and days upon steeples all alone. It's
bad enough with a partner to talk to. That makes me think of poor old
Dan O'Brien. If I hadn't been up with him one day--" Merrill checked
himself and changed the subject.

"I'll give you a case where a man alone could never have done the thing,
I don't care how clever a steeple-climber he might be. It was on St.
Paul's, New York, after we had finished the job and taken everything
down. Then somebody noticed that the weather-vane on top of the ball
wasn't turning properly. I knew in a minute what the matter was; it was
easy enough to fix it, but the thing was to reach the weather-vane. I
don't mean that the climb up the steeple was anything; we had done that
before; but if I tried to climb around that big ball again (it was the
same sort of a wriggling business as that over the bulging stones at
Trinity) I would be sure to scrape off a lot of the fine gilding we had
just put on. And yet I couldn't get at the weather-vane without getting
over the ball. I studied quite a while on this little problem, and
solved it with my partner's help. We both climbed the steeple as far as
the ball; we went up the lightning-rod; then we roped ourselves on the
steeple-shaft by life-lines, and then my partner, that was Joe Lawlor,
stood on my shoulders and did the job. You see it was easy enough that
way."

"Easy enough!" Think of it! Two men clinging to the point of a steeple.
One of them braces