"Will you wear your jewel," I asked, "when the King comes, or when you go to join him beyond the sea?"
"There," he replied, with an expression of rapturous joy, "we shall see the jewel on the King's heart. There we shall have no need of the hidden fountain, for the river of living waters flows there, bright as crystal; and no need of the magic glass, for the King is near; but the jewel will shine in that happy place on brow and breast for ever and ever."
And as I left the sea-shore and the old man, these words floated through my heart, as if they were echoes of his history, or his story an echo of them:
"'Be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance.'"
"'Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you.'"
"'Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice.'"
"'Your joy no man taketh from you.'"
A LEGEND.
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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.
A bishop who afterwards suffered martyrdom in the hands of African Moslems had blessed them. Their first peal had sounded in honour of a great victory. They had summoned the people through ages of conflict to defend their liberties. They had blended their life with the life of every home,—in family joys and family sorrows, at wedding, christening, and funeral. They had made Sundays and holidays glad with their joyous voices. And last, but not least, by aid of an elaborate mechanism of hammers, rope, and pulleys, they had for centuries celebrated the departure of every hour with a chorale, and every half-hour with a strain like the versicle of a chant, and every quarter of an hour with a little sprinkle of sweet sound.
Imagine, then, the dismay of the citizens, when, one Monday morning, eight o'clock came, and no sound issued from the cathedral; half-past eight, silence; nine, not a note of warning! Their wonder was increased when the usual peal rung out, clear and full as ever, for the morning service, and by mid-day the whole city was in a commotion. It was plain something must be wrong with the machinery of the chimes.