teps to lay an offering on Hymen's
altar, Prudence must wait silent at the base till she came down.

Sir George should have been a doctor, his friends said; his manner was
always so genial and reassuring. So having turned these happy phrases,
and being overwhelmed with the grinding pressure of a great practice, he
dismissed the tower of Saint Sepulchre from his mind, and left Rector
and ringers to their own devices.

Thus on an autumn afternoon there was a sound in Cullerne that few of
the inhabitants had ever heard, and the little town stopped its business
to listen to the sweetest peal in all the West Country. How they swung
and rung and sung together, the little bells and the great bells, from
Beata Maria, the sweet, silver-voiced treble, to Taylor John, the
deep-voiced tenor, that the Guild of Merchant Taylors had given three
hundred years ago. There was a charm in the air like the singing of
innumerable birds; people flung up their windows to listen, people stood
in the shop-doors to listen, and the melody went floating away over the
salt-marshes, till the fishermen taking up their lobster-pots paused in
sheer wonder at a music that they had never heard before.

It seemed as if the very bells were glad to break their long repose;
they sang together like the morning stars, they shouted together like
the sons of God for joy. They remembered the times that were gone, and
how they had rung when Abbot Harpingdon was given his red hat, and rung
again when Henry defended the Faith by suppressing the Abbey, and again
when Mary defended the Faith by restoring the Mass, and again when Queen
Bess was given a pair of embroidered gloves as she passed through the
Market Place on her way to Fording. They remembered the long
counter-change of life and death that had passed under the red roofs at
their feet, they remembered innumerable births and marriages and
funerals of old time; they sang together like the morning stars, they
shouted together like the sons of God for joy, they shouted for joy.

The Carisbury ringers came over after all; and Mrs Parkyn bore their
advent with less misgiving, in the hope that directly Lord Blandamer
heard of the honour that was done him, he would send a handsome donation
for the ringers as he had already sent to the workhouse, and the old
folk, and the school-children of Cullerne. The ropes and the cage, and
the pins and the wheels, had all been carefully overhauled; and when the
day came,