'It ain't no use thinking of that, William,' said I. 'Father is sure
to make me promise never to have you--when he's dying, and I can't
refuse him anything. It's just the kind of thing he'd think of.'

Perhaps you will think William ought to have made more stand, for
everybody likes a masterful man; but what stand can you make when
you are up in a belfry with the bells shouting and yelling at you,
and when the girl you are with won't listen to reason? And you have
no idea what them bells were. Often and often since then I have
started up in the bed thinking I heard them again. It was enough to
drive one distracted.

'Well,' says William, 'you'll give me up, but I'll never give you
up; and you mark my words, you and me will be man and wife some
day.'

And as he said it, the bells stopped sudden in the middle of a
change. The rain had come on again. It was very chill up there. My
teeth was chattering, and so was William's, though he pretended he
did it for the joke.

'Let's get inside again,' says he. 'Perhaps they are going home, and
if they are not, we can stay there till they begin it again.'

So we opened the door and crept down the ladder. There was light now
coming up from the bellringers' loft through the holes in the floor,
and we got down to the belfry easy, and as we got to the bottom of
the ladder I heard my father's voice in the loft below--