for it was my best, that it come to me all in a minute that I had
left Mattie locked up in that church. It was very tiresome, and how
to get her out I didn't know. But I thought maybe she would be
trying some of the other doors, and I might turn the key gently and
away again before she could find out it was unlocked.

So up to the church I went, very hot, and a setting sun, and having
had no tea or anything, and as I began to climb the hill my heart
stood still in my veins, for I heard a sound from the church as I
never expected to hear at that time of the day and week.

'O Lord!' I thought, 'she's tried every other way, and now she's
ringing the bell, and she'll fetch up the whole village, and what
will become of me?'

I made the best haste I could, but I could see more than one black
dot moving up the hill before me that showed me folks on their way
home had heard the bell and was going to see what it meant. And when
I got up there they were trying the big door of the church, not
knowing it was the little side one where the key was, and Jack, he
come up almost the same moment I did, and I knew well enough he had
come to get that note out of her prayer-book for fear some one else
should see it.

'Here, I've got the key in my pocket,' says he, and with that he
opened the door, the bell clang, clang, clanging from the tower all
the time like as if the bellringer was drunk and had got a wager on
to get more beats out of the bell in half an hour than the next man.

Whoever it was that was ringing the bell--and I could give a pretty