Read "The Cathedral Chimes: a Legend" by Elizabeth Rundle Charles online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
IN a city whose history dates from the ages of silvery bells and / stately buildings, there stood, and stands now for aught I know, a / cathedral, rich in all the endless fancies of Gothic art. Inside, it / was solemn with shade, and gorgeous with light which came in through / the elaborate tracery of the stained windows, many-coloured, and broken / as the sunbeams through a tropical forest. Outside, fretted pinnacles / and carved bell-towers sprang upward, grand yet fairy-like, as if stone / towers rose as easily and naturally towards heaven as oaks and pines. / But the chief glory of this cathedral was its bells. They were the / pride of the city, and the great attraction to strangers. Their history / formed an important part of the civic chronicles.
A lady of a royal house had given them as a thank offering for her / lord's safe return from the Crusades. All her silver-plate and / ornaments, with spoils of Saracens from the recovered Holy Land, had / been poured into the mould when they were made, so that from their / birth all tender and sacred memories had been fused into their very / essence, and their first tones echoed far-off times and lands.