zing toward the belfry, as if the eye
might foretell that which could only be made sensible to the ear; for,
as yet, there was no dial to the tower-clock.

The hour hands of a thousand watches now verged within a hair's breadth
of the figure 1. A silence, as of the expectation of some Shiloh,
pervaded the swarming plain. Suddenly a dull, mangled sound--naught
ringing in it; scarcely audible, indeed, to the outer circles of the
people--that dull sound dropped heavily from the belfry. At the same
moment, each man stared at his neighbor blankly. All watches were
upheld. All hour-hands were at--had passed--the figure 1. No bell-stroke
from the tower. The multitude became tumultuous.

Waiting a few moments, the chief magistrate, commanding silence, hailed
the belfry, to know what thing unforeseen had happened there.

No response.

He hailed again and yet again.

All continued hushed.

By his order, the soldiers burst in the tower-door; when, stationing
guards to defend it from the now surging mob, the chief, accompanied by
his former associate, climbed the winding stairs. Half-way up, they
stopped to listen. No sound. Mounting faster, they reached the belfry;
but, at the threshold, started at the spectacle disclosed. A spaniel,
which, unbeknown to them, had followed them thus far, stood shivering as
before some unknown monster in a brake: or, rather, as if it snuffed
footsteps leading to some other world.

Bannadonna lay, prostrate and bleeding, at the base of the bell which
was adorned with girls and garlands. He lay at the feet of the hour Una;
his head coinciding, in a vertical line, with her left hand, clasped by
the hour Dua. With downcast face impending over him, like Jael over
nailed Sisera in the tent, was the domino; now no more becloaked.

It had limbs, and seemed clad in a scaly mail, lustrous as a
dragon-beetle's. It was manacled, and its clubbed arms were uplifted,
as if, with its manacles, once more to smite its already smitten
victim. One advanced foot of it was inserted beneath the dead body, as
if in the act of spurning it.

Uncertainty falls on what now followed.

It were but natural to suppose that the magistrates would, at first,
shrink from immediate personal contact with what they saw. At the least,
for a time, they would stand in involuntary doubt; it may be, in more or
less of horrified alarm. Certain it is, that an arquebuss was called for
from below. And some add, that its report, follow