’So we stole on our tiptoes round to the little door that is hardly ever fastened, and so through to the tower.  Father being one of the bellringers, I knew every step.  There’s a stone seat cut out of the wall in the bellringers’ loft, and there we sat down again, and I was just going to tell him again what I had said in the letter about being his sister and a friend, which seemed to comfort me somehow, though William has told me since it never would have him, when William, he gripped my hand like iron, and ‘’S-sh!’ says he, ‘listen.’  And I listened, and oh! what I felt when I heard footsteps coming up the tower.  I didn’t dare speak a word to him, and only kept tight hold of his hand, and pulled him along till we got to the tower steps, and went on up.  But I says to myself, ’Oh, what’s my head made of, to forget that it’s practising night? and Him the church was built for only knows how long they won’t be here practising!’ We went on up the twisted cobwebby stairs, with bits of broken birds’ nests that crackled under our feet that loud I thought for sure the folks below must hear us; and we got into the belfry, and there William was for staying, but I whispered to him—­

’If you hear them bells when they’re all a-going, you won’t never hear much else.  We must get on up out of it unless we want to be deaf the rest of our lives.’

And it was pitch dark in the belfry, except for the little grey slits where the shuttered windows are.  The owls and starlings were frightened, I suppose, at hearing us, though why they should have been, I don’t know, being used to the bells; and they flew about round us liker ghosts than anything feathered, and one great owl flopped out right into my face, till I nearly screamed again.  It was all very, very dusty, and not being able to see, and being afraid to strike a light, we had to feel along the big beams for our way between the bells, I going first, because I knew the way, and reaching back a hand every now and then to see that William was coming after me safe and sound.  On hands and knees we had to go for safety, and all the while I was dreading they would start the bells a-going and, maybe, shake William, who wasn’t as used to it as I was, off the beams, and him perhaps be smashed to pieces by the bells as they swung.

I don’t know how long it took us to get across the belfry to the corner where the ladder is that leads up to the tower-top.  William says it must have been about a couple of minutes, but I think it was much more like half an hour.  I thought we should never get there, and oh! what it was to me when I came to the end of the last beam, and got my foot down on the firm floor again, and the ladder in my hand, and William behind me!  So up we went, me first again, because I knew the way and the fastenings of the door.  And that part of it wasn’t so bad, for I will say, if you’ve got to go up a long ladder, it’s better to go up in the dark, when you can’t see what’s below you if you happen to slip; and I got up and opened the door, and it was light out of doors and fresh with the rain—­though that had stopped now.