ong,
hardened man though he was, his nerves were unstrung to-night in company
with his heartstrings. It was the church clock preparing to strike
twelve. The little doctor, Speck, who had left the house but a minute
before, was standing at the churchyard fence close by, his arms leaning
on the rails, probably ruminating sadly on what had just occurred.
Captain Monk halted beside him in silence, while the clock struck.

As the last stroke vibrated on the air, telling the knell of the old
year, the dawn of the new, another sound began.

Ring, ring, ring! Ring, ring, ring!

The chimes! The sweet, soothing, melodious chimes, carolling forth the
Bay of Biscay. Very pleasant were they in themselves to the ear.
But--did they fall pleasantly on Captain Monk's? It may be, not. It may
be, a wish came over him that he had never thought of instituting them.
But for doing that, the ills of his recent life had never had place.
George West's death would not have lain at his door, or room been made
by it for Tom Dancox, and Katherine would not be lying as he had now
left her--cold and lifeless.

"Could _nothing_ have been done to save her, Speck?" he whispered to the
doctor, whose arms were still on the churchyard railings, listening to
the chimes in silence--though indeed he had asked the same question
indoors before.

"Nothing; or you may be sure, sir, it would have been," answered Mr.
Speck. "Had all the medical men in Worcestershire been about her, they
could not have saved her any more than I could. These unfortunate cases
happen now and then," sighed he, "showing us how powerless we really
are."

Well, it was grievous news wherewith to startle the parish. And Mrs.
Carradyne, a martyr to belief in ghosts and omens, grew to dread the
chimes with a nervous and nameless dread.

II.

It was but the first of February, yet the weather might have served for
May-day: one of those superb days that come once in a while out of their
season, serving to remind the world that the dark, depressing, dreary
winter will not last for ever; though we may have half feared it means
to, forgetting the reassuring promise of the Divine Ruler of all things,
given after the Flood:

"_While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat,
and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease._"

The warm and glorious sunbeams lay on Church Leet, as if to woo the bare
hedges into verdant life, the cold fields to smiling plains.