A short time after this fracas, a personage of venerable appearance presented himself at Epinal, and applied for the post of sacristan and bell-ringer, at that time vacant.

What's the good of curfew, and poor devils of bell-ringers jumping at a rope's-end in bell-towers?

" "You'll have to telephone to Emancipation Proclamation, papa," said Patty, "or she'll get out all the bell-ringers, and drag the river for us.

Once in a while one may hear a bell of deep, sweet tone, like that of the great bell in Cuzco, which is tolled when the last sacrament is being administered to a dying Christian; but the general idea of bell-ringers in this part of the world seems to be to make the greatest possible amount of racket and clamor.

Claude Frollo taught him to speak, to read, and to write, and had made him bell-ringer at Notre Dame.

The hurricane had ripped off the boarding about the bell, and the wind itself was the bell-ringer.

Still, as this experiment would be attended with the utmost danger, while, even if he reached the roof, he would yet be far from his object, he resolved to defer it for a short time, in the hope that ere long seine of the bell-ringers, or other persons connected with the cathedral, might come thither and set him free.

" Before quitting the belfry, Leonard chanced to cast his eyes on a stout staff left there, either by one of the bell-ringers or some chance visitant, and seizing it as an unlooked-for prize, he ran down the steps, followed by the piper's daughter.

I remember when old Handsworth Church stood surrounded by fields, and now it is built up to with villas on nearly every side, and has a neighbouring liquor vault instead of the old-fashioned inn such as often keeps old parish churches in countenance and affords a place of refuge and refreshment for rustic churchwardens, bell-ringers, parish clerks, and the like.

" Once, twice the bell-ringer heard this voice and told the King's son about it.

" Shifting the page, he read of the Swiss Bell-Ringers as back again "after a six years' absence," and at the next item really knew what he read.

*** Women have reinforced the bell-ringers at Speldhurst, Kent.

THE BELLS Shadow and light both strove to be The eight bell-ringers' company, As with his gliding rope in hand, Counting his changes, each did stand; While rang and trembled every stone, To music by the bell-mouths blown: Till the bright clouds that towered on high Seemed to re-echo cry with cry.

It was the bell-ringer going his rounds and opening all the doors; first of all a dog came out, stretching his neck as though he was going to bark with hunger, then two men with their caps over their eyes, wrapped in brown cloaks; the bell-ringer held up the curtain to let them pass out.

In the twilight, figures in black cloaks glided by on their way to the sacristy, stopping to make genuflections before each image; and in the distance, invisible in the darkness, you could still divine the presence of the bell-ringer, like a restless hobgoblin, by the rattle of his bunch of keys and the creaking of the doors he opened on his round.

The bell-ringer passed him several times, following him with uneasy glance, as though this unknown man, of poverty-stricken aspect, who wandered aimlessly about at an hour when the treasures of the church were, as a rule, not so strictly watched, inspired him with little confidence.

In the evenings they would meet in the dwelling of the bell-ringer, or when it was fine weather they would go out into the gallery above the Puerta del Perdon.

Mercifully I had friends at courtsome old bell-ringers who had been in the Cathedral and who remembered the gardener's widow.

"We meet in the tower now," said the bell-ringer; "Silver Stick looks on our meetings with an evil eye, and he has gone so far as to threaten the shoemaker to turn him out of the Claverias if the meetings continue to be held in his house.

" Luna returned to the meetings in the bell-ringer's house.

The Tato looked at him with mocking and threatening eyes, in which Silver Stick could plainly read "Remember the knife"; but what terrified Don Antolin more than anything was the silence of the bell-ringer, and the savage and hostile glance with which he responded to his words.

"Come along, we are going to lock up!" said the bell-ringer, rattling his bunch of keys.

Luna remembered the bell-ringer's offer, but soon he heard the sound of many steps magnified by the echo as if a whole host were advancing.

To all Bell-ringers, I bequeath new Ropes, And let them use 'em at their own discretions.

It would growl and strangle as much as possible in the hands of Benjamin Beals, the bell-ringer and coffin-maker of Barmouth.