The Cathedral Chimes: a Legend

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.