try how he would, he could not get to sleep. Now he was on
his right side, but the pillow grew hot and had to be turned; now on his
left, with the pillow turned back. Too many clothes, and the
counterpane stripped back. Not enough: his uncle always said that
warmth was conducive to sleep, and the counterpane pulled up. But no
sleep.

"Oh, how wakeful I do feel!" muttered the boy impatiently, as he tossed
from side to side. "Is it the chicken?"

No; it was not the chicken, but the church clock, and those two wheels,
which kept on going round and round in his mind without cessation. He
tried to think of something else: his studies, Greek, Latin, the
mathematical problems upon which he was engaged; but, no: ratchets and
pinions, toothed-wheels, free and detached, pendulums and weights, had
it all their own way, and at last he jumped out of bed, opened the
window and stood there, looking out, and cooling his heated, weary head
for a time.

"Now I can sleep," he said to himself, triumphantly, as he returned to
his bed; but he was wrong, and a quarter of an hour after he was at the
washstand, pouring himself out a glass of water, which he drank.

That did have some effect, for at last he dropped off into a fitful
unrefreshing sleep, to be mentally borne at once into the chamber of the
big stone tower, with the clockwork tumbled about in heaps all round
him; and he vainly trying to catch the toothed-wheels, which kept
running round and round, while the clock began to strike.

Vane started up in bed, for the dream seemed real--the clock was
striking.

No: that was not a clock striking, but one of the bells, tolling rapidly
in the middle of the night.

For a moment the lad thought he was asleep, but the next he had sprung
out of bed and run to the window to thrust out his head and listen.

It was unmistakable: the big bell was going as he had never heard it
before--not being rung, but as if someone had hold of the clapper and
were beating it against the side--_Dang, dang, dang, dang_--stroke
following stroke rapidly; and, half-confused by the sleep from which he
had been awakened, Vane was trying to make out what it meant, when
faintly, but plainly heard on the still night air, came that most
startling of cries--

"Fire! Fire! Fire!"

The Weathercock--by George Manville Fenn

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

A DISTURBED NIGHT.

Just as Vane shivered at the cry, and ran to hurry on some clothes,
there was the shap