days that are said to be as fine; but
for years and years this organ of Saint Bavon was the grandest in the
world."

"Do you know how large it is?" asked Ben. "I noticed that the church
itself was prodigiously high and that the organ filled the end of the
great aisle almost from floor to roof."

"That's true," said Lambert, "and how superb the pipes looked--just like
grand columns of silver. They're only for show, you know. The REAL pipes
are behind them, some big enough for a man to crawl through, and some
smaller than a baby's whistle. Well, sir, for size, the church is higher
than Westminster Abbey, to begin with, and, as you say, the organ makes
a tremendous show even then. Father told me last night that it is one
hundred and eight feet high, fifty feet wide, and has over five thousand
pipes. It has sixty-four stops--if you know what they are, I don't--and
three keyboards."

"Good for you!" said Ben. "You have a fine memory. MY head is a perfect
colander for figures. They slip through as fast as they're poured
in. But other facts and historical events stay behind--that's some
consolation."

"There we differ," returned Van Mounen. "I'm great on names and figures,
but history, take it altogether, seems to me to be the most hopeless
kind of jumble."

Meantime Carl and Ludwig were having a discussion concerning some square
wooden monuments they had observed in the interior of the church. Ludwig
declared that each bore the name of the person buried beneath, and
Carl insisted that they had no names but only the heraldic arms of the
deceased painted on a black ground, with the date of the death in gilt
letters.

"I ought to know," said Carl, "for I walked across to the east side, to
look for the cannonball Mother told me was embedded there. It was fired
into the church, in the year fifteen hundred and something, by those
rascally Spaniards, while the services were going on. There it was
in the wall, sure enough, and while I was walking back, I noticed the
monuments. I tell you, they haven't the sign of a name on them."

"Ask Peter," said Ludwig, only half convinced.

"Carl is right," replied Peter, who, though conversing with Jacob, had
overheard their dispute. "Well, Jacob, as I was saying, Handel, the
great composer, chanced to visit Haarlem and, of course, he at once
hunted up this famous organ. He gained admittance and was playing upon
it with all his might when the regular organist chanced to enter the
buil