days of the year but one you would not meet a soul. We went up
through the churchyard. It was 'most dark, but I wasn't a bit afraid
with William's arm round me. But when we got to the porch and had
sat down, I was sorry I'd come, for I heard feet on the road below,
and they stopped outside the lychgate.

'Come, quick,' says I, 'or we're caught like rats in a trap. If I am
going to give you up to please father, I may as well please him all
round. There's no reason why he should know I've seen you.'

'So we stole on our tiptoes round to the little door that is hardly
ever fastened, and so through to the tower. Father being one of the
bellringers, I knew every step. There's a stone seat cut out of the
wall in the bellringers' loft, and there we sat down again, and I
was just going to tell him again what I had said in the letter about
being his sister and a friend, which seemed to comfort me somehow,
though William has told me since it never would have him, when
William, he gripped my hand like iron, and ''S-sh!' says he,
'listen.' And I listened, and oh! what I felt when I heard footsteps
coming up the tower. I didn't dare speak a word to him, and only
kept tight hold of his hand, and pulled him along till we got to the
tower steps, and went on up. But I says to myself, 'Oh, what's my
head made of, to forget that it's practising night? and Him the
church was built for only knows how long they won't be here
practising!' We went on up the twisted cobwebby stairs, with bits of
broken birds' nests that crackled under our feet that loud I thought
for sure the folks below must hear us; and we got into the belfry,
and there William was for staying, but I whispered to him--

'If you hear them bells when they're all a-going, you won't never