water; but in starry and moonlit nights he shows himself. He is
very old. Grandmother says that she has heard her own grandmother tell
of him; he is said to lead a solitary life, and to have nobody with
whom he can converse save the great old church Bell. Once the Bell
hung in the church tower; but now there is no trace left of the
tower or of the church, which was called St. Alban's.

"Ding-dong! ding-dong!" sounded the Bell, when the tower still
stood there; and one evening, while the sun was setting, and the
Bell was swinging away bravely, it broke loose and came flying down
through the air, the brilliant metal shining in the ruddy beam.

"Ding-dong! ding-dong! Now I'll retire to rest!" sang the Bell,
and flew down into the Odense-Au, where it is deepest; and that is why
the place is called the "bell-deep."

But the Bell got neither rest nor sleep. Down in the Au-mann's
haunt it sounds and rings, so that the tones sometimes pierce upward
through the waters; and many people maintain that its strains forebode
the death of some one; but that is not true, for the Bell is only
talking with the Au-mann, who is now no longer alone.

And what is the Bell telling? It is old, very old, as we have
already observed; it was there long before grandmother's grandmother
was born; and yet it is but a child in comparison with the Au-mann,
who is quite an old quiet personage, an oddity, with his hose of
eel-skin, and his scaly Jacket with the yellow lilies for buttons, and
a wreath of reed in his hair and seaweed in his beard; but he looks
very pretty for all that.

What the Bell tells? To repeat it all would require years and
days; for year by year it is telling the old stories, sometimes
short ones, sometimes long ones, according to its whim; it tells of
old times, of the dark hard times, thus:

"In the church of St. Alban, the monk had mounted up into the
tower. He was young and handsome, but thoughtful exceedingly. He
looked through the loophole out upon the Odense-Au, when the bed of
the water was yet broad, and the monks' meadow was still a lake. He
looked out over it, and over the rampart, and over the nuns' hill
opposite, where the convent lay, and the light gleamed forth from
the nun's cell. He had known the nun right well, and he thought of
her, and his heart beat quicker as he thought. Ding-dong! ding-dong!"

Yes, this was the story the Bell told.

"Into the tower came also the dapper man-servant of t