a peal.'
So up we got to it, till old Parmiter come in to stop us. And you take
my word for it, they never have been rung since. There's only that rope
there"--and he pointed to a bell-rope that came down from the lantern
far above, and was fastened back against the wall--"wot we tolls the
bell with for service, and that ain't the big bell neither."

"Did Sir George Farquhar know all this?" Westray asked the Rector.

"No, sir; Sir George did not know it," said the Rector, with some
tartness in his voice, "because it was not material that he should know
it; and Sir George's time, when he was here, was taken up with more
pressing matters. I never heard this old wife's tale myself till the
present moment, and although it is true that we do not ring the bells,
this is on account of the supposed weakness of the cage in which they
swing, and has nothing whatever to do with the tower itself. You may
take my word for that. `Sir George,' I said, when Sir George asked
me--`Sir George, I have been here forty years, and if you will agree not
to ask for your fees till my tower tumbles down, why, I shall be very
glad.' Ha, ha, ha! how Sir George enjoyed that joke! Ha, ha, ha!"

Westray turned away with a firm resolve to report to headquarters the
story of the interrupted peal, and to make an early examination of the
tower on his own behalf.

The clerk was nettled that the Rector should treat his story with such
scant respect, but he saw that the others were listening with interest,
and he went on:

"Well, 'taint for I to say the old tower's a-going to fall, and I hope
Sir Jarge won't ever live to larf the wrong side o' his mouth; but
stopping of a ring never brought luck with it yet, and it brought no
luck to my lord. First he lost his dear son and his son's wife in
Cullerne Bay, and I remember as if 'twas yesterday how we grappled for
'em all night, and found their bodies lying close together on the sand
in three fathoms, when the tide set inshore in the morning. And then he
fell out wi' my lady, and she never spoke to him again--no, not to the
day of her death. They lived at Fording--that's the great hall over
there," he said to Westray, jerking his thumb towards the east--"for
twenty years in separate wings, like you mi'd say each in a house to
themselves. And then he fell out wi' Mr Fynes, his grandson, and
turned him out of house and lands, though he couldn't leave them
anywhere else when he died. 'Tis Mr Fyne