ad to think that the ties were there; he
hoped that they might indeed support the strain which this bell-ringing
was bringing on the tower; he hoped that Sir George was right, and that
he, Westray, was wrong. Yet he had pasted a strip of paper across the
crack, so that by tearing it might give warning if any serious movement
were taking place.

As he leant over the screen of the organ-loft, he thought of that
afternoon when he had first seen signs of the arch moving, of that
afternoon when the organist was playing "Sharnall in D flat." How much
had happened since then! He thought of that scene which had happened in
this very loft, of Sharnall's end, of the strange accident that had
terminated a sad life on that wild night. What a strange accident it
was, what a strange thing that Sharnall should have been haunted by that
wandering fancy of a man following him with a hammer, and then have been
found in this very loft, with the desperate wound on him that the
pedal-note had dealt! How much had happened--his own proposal to
Anastasia, his refusal, and now that event for which the bells were
ringing! How quickly the scenes changed! What a creature of an hour
was he, was every man, in face of these grim walls that had stood
enduring, immutable, for generation after generation, for age after age!
And then he smiled as he thought that these eternal realities of stone
were all created by ephemeral man; that he, ephemeral man, was even now
busied with schemes for their support, with anxieties lest they should
fall and grind to powder all below.

The bells sounded fainter and far off inside the church. As they
reached his ears through the heavy stone roof they were more harmonious,
all harshness was softened; the _sordino_ of the vaulting produced the
effect of a muffled peal. He could hear deep-voiced Taylor John go
striding through his singing comrades in the intricacies of the Treble
Bob Triples, and yet there was another voice in Westray's ears that made
itself heard even above the booming of the tenor bell. It was the cry
of the tower arches, the small still voice that had haunted him ever
since he had been at Cullerne. "The arch never sleeps," they said--"the
arch never sleeps;" and again, "They have bound on us a burden too heavy
to be borne; but we are shifting it. The arch never sleeps."

The ringers were approaching the end; they had been at their work for
near three hours, the 5,040 changes were almost fi