Carolyn of the Corners

by Ruth Belmore Endicott

“Me, too,” agreed another.

The clanging of the chapel bell was a comforting sound. Joseph Stagg did not know that, unable to find the sexton, Amanda Parlow had forced the church door and was tugging at the rough rope herself.

Back and forth she rang the iron clapper, and it was no uncertain note that clanged across the storm-driven cove that afternoon. It was not work to which Carolyn May’s “pretty lady” was used. Her shoulders soon ached and the palms of her hands were raw and bleeding. But she continued to toll the bell without a moment’s surcease.

She did not know how much that resonant sound might mean to those out on the ice—to the little girl and the boy who might have no other means of locating the shore, to the men who were searching for the lost ones; for they, too, might be lost in the storm.

The axle of the old bell groaned and shrieked at each revolution. Miss Amanda pulled on the rope desperately. She did not think to put her foot in the loop of the rope to aid her in this work. With the power of her arms and shoulders alone she brought the music from the throat of the bell. Every stroke was a shock that racked her body terribly. She dared not leave the rope for a minute while she called from the door for help.

She hoped the sexton would come, wondering who was so steadily pulling the bell rope. Stroke followed stroke. The axle shrieked—and she could have done the same with pain had she not set her teeth in her lip and put forth every atom of will power she possessed to keep to the work and stifle her agony.

On and on, till her brain swam, and her breath came chokingly from her lungs. Once she missed the stroke, her strength seeming to desert her for the moment. Frantically she clawed at the rope again and pulled down on it with renewed desperation.

“I will! I will!” she gasped.

Why? For the sake of the little child that she, too, had learned to love?

Perhaps. And, yet, it was not the flowerlike face of little Carolyn May that Amanda Parlow saw continually before her eyes as she tugged on the bell rope with bleeding hands.