ade me follow her through lire and water--it _has_ made
me follow her through fire and water. When I reached her she put the
great black key in the lock. She had some difficulty in turning the
key, but I did not presume to offer such services as mine to so
superior a little woman. After one or two fruitless efforts with both
her hands, each attempt accompanied with a little laugh and a little
merry glance in my face, she turned the key and pushed open the door.
We both passed into the ghastly old church, through the green glass
windows of which the sun was shining, and illuminating the broken
remains of the high-hacked pews on the opposite side. She ran along
towards the belfry, and I soon lost her, for she passed up the stone
steps, where I knew I could not follow her.

In deep mortification I stood listening at the bottom of the
steps--listening to those little feet crunching up the broken
stones--listening to the rustle of her dress against the narrow stone
walls, until the sounds grew fainter and fainter, and then ceased.

Presently I heard her voice a long way up, calling out, 'Little boy,
if you go outside you will see something.' I guessed at once that she
was going to exhibit herself on the tower, where, before my accident,
I and my brother Frank were so fond of going. I went outside the
church and stood in the graveyard, looking up at the tower. In a
minute I saw her on it. Her face was turned towards me, gilded by the
golden sunshine. I could, or thought I could, even at that distance,
see the flash of the bright eyes looking at me. Then a little hand
was put over the parapet, and I saw a dark hat swinging by its
strings, as she was waving it to me. Oh! that I could have climbed
those steps and done that! But that exploit of hers touched a strange
chord within me. Had she been a boy, I could have borne it in a
defiant way; or had she been any other girl than this, my heart would
not have sunk as it now did when I thought of the gulf between her
and me. Down I sat upon a grave, and looked at her with a feeling
quite new to me.

This was a phase of cripplehood I had not contemplated. She soon left
the tower, and made her appearance at the church door again. After
locking it, which she did by thrusting a piece of stick through the
handle of the key, she came and stood over me. But I turned my eyes
away and gazed across the sea, and tried to deceive myself into
believing that the waves, and the gulls, and the s