for the Bells.

And though I had said his love, I would not have recalled the word,
though it would scarcely have expressed his complicated feeling.
For, being but a simple man, he invested them with a strange and
solemn character. They were so mysterious, often heard and never
seen; so high up, so far off, so full of such a deep strong melody,
that he regarded them with a species of awe; and sometimes when he
looked up at the dark arched windows in the tower, he half expected
to be beckoned to by something which was not a Bell, and yet was
what he had heard so often sounding in the Chimes. For all this,
Toby scouted with indignation a certain flying rumour that the
Chimes were haunted, as implying the possibility of their being
connected with any Evil thing. In short, they were very often in
his ears, and very often in his thoughts, but always in his good
opinion; and he very often got such a crick in his neck by staring
with his mouth wide open, at the steeple where they hung, that he
was fain to take an extra trot or two, afterwards, to cure it.

The very thing he was in the act of doing one cold day, when the
last drowsy sound of Twelve o'clock, just struck, was humming like
a melodious monster of a Bee, and not by any means a busy bee, all
through the steeple!

'Dinner-time, eh!' said Toby, trotting up and down before the
church. 'Ah!'

Toby's nose was very red, and his eyelids were very red, and he
winked very much, and his shoulders were very near his ears, and
his legs were very stiff, and altogether he was evidently a long