the ringers stood to their work like men, and rang a full peal
of grandsire triples in two hours and fifty-nine minutes.

There was a little cask of Bulteel's brightest tenpenny that some
magician's arm had conjured up through the well-hole in the belfry
floor: and Clerk Janaway, for all he was teetotaler, eyed the foaming
pots wistfully as he passed them round after the work was done.

"Well," he said, "there weren't no int'rupted peal this time, were
there? These here old bells never had a finer set of ringing-men under
them, and I lay you never had a finer set of bells above your heads, my
lads; now did 'ee? I've heard the bells swung many a time in Carisbury
tower, and heard 'em when the Queen was set upon her throne, but, lor'!
they arn't so deep-like nor yet so sweet as this here old ring. Perhaps
they've grow'd the sweeter for lying by a bit, like port in the cellars
of the Blandamer Arms, though I've heard Dr Ennefer say some of it was
turned so like sherry, that no man living couldn't tell the difference."

Westray had bowed like loyal subaltern to the verdict of his Chief. Sir
George's decision that the bells might safely be rung lifted the
responsibility from the young man's shoulders, but not the anxiety from
his mind. He never left the church while the peal was ringing. First
he was in the bell-chamber steadying himself by the beams of the cage,
while he marked the wide-mouthed bells now open heavenwards, now turn
back with a rush into the darkness below. Then he crept deafened with
the clangour down the stairs into the belfry, and sat on the sill of a
window watching the ringers rise and fall at their work. He felt the
tower sway restlessly under the stress of the swinging metal, but there
was nothing unusual in the motion; there was no falling of mortar,
nothing to attract any special attention. Then he went down into the
church, and up again into the organ-loft, whence he could see the wide
bow of that late Norman arch which spanned the south transept.

Above the arch ran up into the lantern the old fissure, zigzag like a
baleful lightning-flash, that had given him so much anxiety. The day
was overcast, and heavy masses of cloud drifting across the sky darkened
the church. But where the shadows hung heaviest, under a stone gallery
passage that ran round the inside of the lantern, could be traced one of
those heavy tie-rods with which the tower had recently been
strengthened. Westray was gl