“Now I can sleep,” he said to himself, triumphantly, as he returned to his bed; but he was wrong, and a quarter of an hour after he was at the washstand, pouring himself out a glass of water, which he drank.
That did have some effect, for at last he dropped off into a fitful unrefreshing sleep, to be mentally borne at once into the chamber of the big stone tower, with the clockwork tumbled about in heaps all round him; and he vainly trying to catch the toothed-wheels, which kept running round and round, while the clock began to strike.
Vane started up in bed, for the dream seemed real—the clock was striking.
No: that was not a clock striking, but one of the bells, tolling rapidly in the middle of the night.
For a moment the lad thought he was asleep, but the next he had sprung out of bed and run to the window to thrust out his head and listen.
It was unmistakable: the big bell was going as he had never heard it before—not being rung, but as if someone had hold of the clapper and were beating it against the side—Dang, dang, dang, dang—stroke following stroke rapidly; and, half-confused by the sleep from which he had been awakened, Vane was trying to make out what it meant, when faintly, but plainly heard on the still night air, came that most startling of cries—
“Fire! Fire! Fire!”
