re tower from
which springs an octagonal turret carrying an elaborate
campanile. There is a quaint survival on this belfry, for upon it
the town crier has a little hut. He is a cobbler, and from below
one can hear the tap-tap of his hammer as he plies his trade.
But at night he calls out the hours to the town below, together
with any information of interest, concluding with the assurance
that he and his wife are in good health. The office has
descended from father to son from the earliest days of the
history of Furnes, and its holder has always been a cobbler. Till
early in last November the record was unbroken, but, alas the
fear of German shells was too much for the cobbler, and he is
gone.

Furnes is a town of contrasts, and though both its churches
were built by the wonderful architects of the fourteenth century,
there could hardly be two buildings more diverse. Behind the
line of red roofs on the east of the square rises the rugged
tower of St. Nicholas, a great square mass of old and weather-
beaten brick, unfinished like so many of the Belgian towers, but
rough, massive, and grand, like some rude giant. On the north,
behind the Palais de Justice and the belfry, stands St.
Walburga, with the delicate tracery of her flying buttresses and
her spire fine as a needle. There is something fitting in the
rugged simplicity which commemorates the grand old Bishop,
and in the exquisite fragility of the shrine of the virgin saint. The
double flying buttresses of St. Walburga, intersecting in mid-air,
and apparently defying the laws of gravity, are as delicate a
dream as the mind of architect could conceive, and they give to
the whole an airy grace which cannot be described. The church
was planned six hundred years ago on a gigantic scale, in the
days when men built for the worship of God and not for the
accommodation of an audience, and for six hundred years the
choir stood alone as a challenge to future generations to
complete what had been so gloriously begun. Only seven years
ago the transept was added, and to the credit of its builders it is
worthy to stand beside the choir. One wonders how many hundred
years may have passed before the vision of the first great architect
is complete. It is built for the most part of red brick, the rich
red brick of Belgium, which grows only more mellow with age.
Inside, the tall pillars of a dark grey stone support at a great
height a finely groined roof of the same red brick, lit by