Poor Kaspar! it was too late now to wish that he had left the clock alone. He tried to scream for help, but with his neck in that cramped position, the cry that he gave was scarcely louder than the chirp of a sparrow. He struggled desperately to writhe himself back through the hole; but a piece of the wood-work had slipped down upon the back of his neck, and held him like a vise.
On came the destroyer, nearer and nearer still, marking off with its measured tick his few remaining moments of life. And all the while the sun was shining gayly, the tiny flags were fluttering on the booths of the market, and the merry voices of his school-fellows who were playing in the market-place came faintly to his ears, while he hung there helpless, with Death stealing upon him inch by inch. His head grew dizzy, and the measured beat of the ticking sounded like the roll of a muffled drum, while the coming hand of the clock looked like a monstrous arm outstretched to seize him, and the carved faces on the spouts seemed to grin and gibber at him in mockery. And still the terrible hand crept onward, nearer, nearer, nearer.
"What can that thing in the clock face be?" said a tourist below, pointing his spy-glass upward. "Why, I declare it looks like a boy's head!"
"A boy's head!" cried a gray-haired watchmaker beside him (one of Hans Scheller's special friends), snatching hastily at the glass as he spoke. "Why, good gracious! it's little Kaspar. He'll be killed! he'll be killed!" And he rushed toward the church, shouting like a madman.
The alarm spread like wild-fire, and before Klugmann, the watchmaker, had got half-way up the stairs leading to the tower, more than a score of excited men were scampering at his heels. But at the top of the stair they were suddenly brought to a stand-still by the locked door.
"It's locked!" cried Klugmann in tones of horror, "and Hans must have taken the key with him, for it isn't here."
"Never mind the key," roared a brawny smith behind him. "Pick up that beam, comrades, and run it against the lock. All together now!"
Crash went the door, in rushed the crowd, and Kaspar, now senseless from sheer fright, was dragged out of his strange prison just as the huge bar of the minute-hand actually touched his neck. And so it fell out that poor old Scheller, coming home for a quiet afternoon nap, found the door of the tower smashed in, his son lying in a swoon, and his little room crowded with strange men all talking at once.
But from that day forth Kaspar Scheller never meddled with the church clock again.