* * * * *

The last day of the year came round, and the usual banquet would come with it.  The weather this Christmas was not like that of last; the white snow lay on the ground, the cold biting frost hardened the glistening icicles on the trees.

And the chimes?  Ready these three months past, they had not yet been heard.  They would be to-night.  Whether Captain Monk wished the remembrance of Mr. West’s death to die away a bit first, or that he preferred to open the treat on the banqueting night, certain it was that he had kept them silent.  When the church clock should toll the midnight knell of the old year, the chimes would ring out to welcome the new one and gladden the ears of Church Leet.

But not without a remonstrance.  That morning, as the Captain sat in his study writing a letter, Mrs. Carradyne came to him.

“Godfrey,” she said in a low and pleading tone, “you will not suffer the chimes to play to-night, will you?  Pray do not.”

“Not suffer the chimes to play?” cried the Captain.  “But indeed I shall.  Why, this is the special night they were put up for.”

“I know it, Godfrey.  But—­you cannot think what a strangely-strong feeling I have against it:  an instinct, it seems to me.  The chimes have brought nothing but discomfort and disaster yet; they may bring more in the future.”

Captain Monk stared at her.  “What d’ye mean, Emma?”

“I would never let them be heard,” she said impressively.  “I would have them taken down again.  The story went about, you know, that poor George West in dying prophesied that whenever they should be heard woe would fall upon this house.  I am not superstitious, Godfrey, but—­”

Sheer passion had tied, so far, Godfrey Monk’s lips.  “Not superstitious!” he raved out.  “You are worse than that, Emma—­a fool.  How dare you bring your nonsense here?  There’s the door.”

The banquet hour approached.  Nearly all the guests of last year were again present in the warm and holly-decorated dining-room, the one notable exception being the ill-fated Parson West.  Parson Dancox came in his stead, and said grace from the post of honour at the Captain’s right hand.  Captain Monk did not appear to feel any remorse or regret:  he was jovial, free, and grandly hospitable; one might suppose he had promoted the dead clergyman to a canonry instead of to a place in the churchyard.

“What became of the poor man’s widow, Squire?” whispered a gentleman from the neighbourhood of Evesham to Mr. Todhetley, who sat on the left-hand of his host; Sir Thomas Rivers taking the foot of the table this year.

“Mrs. West?  Well, we heard she opened a girls’ school up in London,” breathed the Squire.

“And what tale was that about his leaving a curse on the chimes?—­I never heard the rights of it.”

“Hush!” said the Squire cautiously.  “Nobody talks of that here.  Or believes it, either.  Poor West was a man to leave a blessing behind him; never a curse.”