Since then, whenever I have had the opportunity, I have gone to the top of the

tower and enjoyed myself. It was hard work, but it repaid in full the mere

physical exertion of climbing a few stairs.

 

Besides, I knew what my reward would be. I would see the land and the sky, and I

would listen to the stories of my kind friend the watchman, who lived in a small

shack, built in a sheltered corner of the gallery.

 

He looked after the clock and was a father to the bells, and he warned of fires,

but he enjoyed many free hours and then he smoked a pipe and thought his own

peaceful thoughts. He had gone to school almost fifty years before and he had

rarely read a book, but he had lived on the top of his tower for so many years

that he had absorbed the wisdom of that wide world which surrounded him on all

sides.

 

History he knew well, for it was a living thing with him. "There," he would say,

pointing to a bend of the river, "there, my boy, do you see those trees? That is

where the Prince of Orange cut the dikes to drown the land and save Leyden." Or

he would tell me the tale of the old Meuse, until the broad river ceased to be a

convenient harbour and became a wonderful highroad, carrying the ships of De

Ruyter and Tromp upon that famous last voyage, when they gave their lives that

the sea might be free to all.

 

Then there were the little villages, clustering around the protecting church

which once, many years ago, had been the home of their Patron Saints. In the