The Trial [219]
had both triforium and clerestory. It was a sort of labyrinth, and they wondered whether any one, except perhaps the plumber's foreman knew his way among all the doors. Then there was one leading inwards to the eight bells--from whose fascinations Ethel thought Dickie never would be taken away--and still more charming, to the clock, which clanged a tremendous three, as they were in the act of looking at it, causing Leonard to make a great start, and then colour painfully. It was hard to believe, as Daisy said, that the old tower, that looked so short and squat below, could be so very high when you came to go up it; but the glimpses of the country, through the little loop-hole windows, were most inviting. At last, Aubrey, who was foremost, pushed up the trap-door, and emerged; but, as Dickie followed him, exclaimed, 'Here we are; but you ladies in crinolines will never follow! You'll stick fast for ever, and Leonard can't pass, so there you'll all have to stay.' 'Aunt Daisy will sail away like a balloon,' added Dickie, roguishly, looking back at her, and holding on his cap. But Gertrude vigorously compressed her hoop, and squeezed through, followed by Ethel and Leonard. There was a considerable space, square, leaded and protected by the battlemented parapet, with a deep moulding round, and a gutter resulting in the pipe smoked by Ethel's likeness, the gurgoyle. Of course the first thing Dickie and Aubrey did was to look for the letters that commemorated the ascent of H. M., E. M., M. M., in 1852; and it was equally needful that R. R. M., if nobody else, should likewise leave a record on the leads. There was an R. M. of 1820, that made it impossible to gainsay him. The view was not grand in itself, but there was a considerable charm in looking down on the rooks in their leafless trees, cawing over their old nests, and in seeing the roofs of the town; far away, too, the gray Welsh hills, and between, the country lying like a map, with rivers traced in light instead of black. Leonard stood still, his face turned towards the greenest of the meadows, and the river where it dashed over the wheel of a mill. 'Have you seen it again?' asked Ethel, as she stood by him, and watched his eye. 'No. I am rather glad to see it first from so far off,' he answered, 'I mean to walk over some day.' 'Ethel,' called Gertrude, 'is this your gurgoyle? His profile, as seen from above, isn't flattering.' '0, Daisy, don't lean over so far.' 'Quite safe;' but at that instant a gust of wind caught her hat, she grasped at it, but only saved it from whirling away, and made it fall short. 'There, Ethel, your image has put on my hat; and henceforth will appear to the wondering city in a black hat and feather!' 'I'll get it,' exclaimed the ever ready Dickie; and in another moment he had mounted the parapet and was reaching for it. Whether it were Gertrude's shriek, or the natural recoil away from the grasping hand, or that his hold on the side of the adjoining pinnacle was insecure, he lost his balance, and with a sudden cry, vanished from their eyes. The frightful consternation of that moment none of those four could ever bear to recall; the next, they remembered that he could only fall as far as the roof, but it was Ethel and Leonard alone who durst press to the parapet, and at the same moment a cry came up-- 'Oh, come! I'm holding on, but it cuts! Oh, come!' Ethel saw, some five-and-twenty feet below, the little boy upon the transept roof, a smooth slope of lead, only broken by a skylight, a bit of churchwarden's architecture still remaining. The child had gone crashing against the window, and now lay back clinging to its iron frame. Behind him was the entire height within to the church floor, before him a rapid slope, ended by a course of stone, wide enough indeed to walk on, but too narrow to check the impetus from slipping down the inclination above. Ethel's brain swam; she just perceived that both Aubrey and Leonard had disappeared, and then had barely power to support Gertrude, who reeled against her, giddy with horror. 'Oh look,