light. This floor was on an even height with the roof of the church, and it was

used as a storeroom. Covered with many inches of dust, there lay the abandoned

symbols of a venerable faith which had been discarded by the good people of the

city many years ago. That which had meant life and death to our ancestors was

here reduced to junk and rubbish. The industrious rat had built his nest among

the carved images and the ever watchful spider had opened up shop between the

outspread arms of a kindly saint.

 

The next floor showed us from where we had derived our light. Enormous open

windows with heavy iron bars made the high and barren room the roosting place of

hundreds of pigeons. The wind blew through the iron bars and the air was filled

with a weird and pleasing music. It was the noise of the town below us, but a

noise which had been purified and cleansed by the distance. The rumbling of

heavy carts and the clinking of horses' hoofs, the winding of cranes and

pulleys, the hissing sound of the patient steam which had been set to do the

work of man in a thousand different ways--they had all been blended into a

softly rustling whisper which provided a beautiful background for the trembling

cooing of the pigeons.

 

Here the stairs came to an end and the ladders began. And after the first ladder

(a slippery old thing which made one feel his way with a cautious foot) there

was a new and even greater wonder, the town-clock.

 

I saw the heart of time. I could hear the heavy pulsebeats of the rapid

seconds--one--two--three--up to sixty. Then a sudden quivering noise when all