Uncertainty falls on what now followed.

It were but natural to suppose that the magistrates would, at first, shrink from immediate personal contact with what they saw.  At the least, for a time, they would stand in involuntary doubt; it may be, in more or less of horrified alarm.  Certain it is, that an arquebuss was called for from below.  And some add, that its report, followed by a fierce whiz, as of the sudden snapping of a main-spring, with a steely din, as if a stack of sword-blades should be dashed upon a pavement, these blended sounds came ringing to the plain, attracting every eye far upward to the belfry, whence, through the lattice-work, thin wreaths of smoke were curling.

Some averred that it was the spaniel, gone mad by fear, which was shot.  This, others denied.  True it was, the spaniel never more was seen; and, probably, for some unknown reason, it shared the burial now to be related of the domino.  For, whatever the preceding circumstances may have been, the first instinctive panic over, or else all ground of reasonable fear removed, the two magistrates, by themselves, quickly rehooded the figure in the dropped cloak wherein it had been hoisted.  The same night, it was secretly lowered to the ground, smuggled to the beach, pulled far out to sea, and sunk.  Nor to any after urgency, even in free convivial hours, would the twain ever disclose the full secrets of the belfry.

From the mystery unavoidably investing it, the popular solution of the foundling’s fate involved more or less of supernatural agency.  But some few less unscientific minds pretended to find little difficulty in otherwise accounting for it.  In the chain of circumstantial inferences drawn, there may, or may not, have been some absent or defective links.  But, as the explanation in question is the only one which tradition has explicitly preserved, in dearth of better, it will here be given.  But, in the first place, it is requisite to present the supposition entertained as to the entire motive and mode, with their origin, of the secret design of Bannadonna; the minds above-mentioned assuming to penetrate as well into his soul as into the event.  The disclosure will indirectly involve reference to peculiar matters, none of, the clearest, beyond the immediate subject.

At that period, no large bell was made to sound otherwise than as at present, by agitation of a tongue within, by means of ropes, or percussion from without, either from cumbrous machinery, or stalwart watchmen, armed with heavy hammers, stationed in the belfry, or in sentry-boxes on the open roof, according as the bell was sheltered or exposed.

It was from observing these exposed bells, with their watchmen, that the foundling, as was opined, derived the first suggestion of his scheme.  Perched on a great mast or spire, the human figure, viewed from below, undergoes such a reduction in its apparent size, as to obliterate its intelligent features.  It evinces no personality.  Instead of bespeaking volition, its gestures rather resemble the automatic ones of the arms of a telegraph.