looked about him vacantly, and sank down in a swoon.

* * * * *

He saw the tower, whither his charmed footsteps had brought him,
swarming with dwarf phantoms, sprites, elfin creatures of the Bells.
He saw them leaping, flying, dropping, pouring from the Bells without
a pause. He saw them, round him on the ground; above him in the air;
clambering from him by the ropes below; looking down upon him from the
massive iron-girdered beams; peeping in upon him through the chinks
and loopholes in the walls; spreading away and away from him in
enlarging circles. He saw them of all aspects and all shapes. He saw
them ugly, handsome, crippled, exquisitely formed. He saw them young,
he saw them old; he saw them kind, he saw them cruel; he saw them
merry, he saw them grim; he saw them dance, he heard them sing; he saw
them tear their hair, he heard them howl. He saw the air thick with
them.

_Wh-o-o-o-sh!_ With what a wild whirr of startled wings the owls and
bats scurried away, dim spectral hiding things that love the darkness
and the silence of night, and shrink from light and cheerful sounds!
"Well rid of _you_!" murmured _Punch_, as _Toby_ barked at the flying
phantoms.

But among the other swarming sprites, and circling elfs, and frolic
phantoms of the Bells, _Punch_ beheld brighter things. That pleasant
pair, hand in hand, princely-looking both, and loving withal, bring a
music as of marriage-bells "all in the wild March morning." And those
other goodly and gracious presences, hint they not of Health and
Home Happiness, and Benignant Art, and Humanity-serving Science, of