Bow-wow-wow! It was the voice of Toby. It meant not, this time, either warning or reproof; rather amicable acknowledgment, and just a little surprise. Not fear, oh, no! not fear.
A Voice—was it a vision-voice, or the accents of the biggest of the Bells, or was it, perchance, the veritable Voice of Time himself, naturally and fitly vocal and audible at this particular Season?—sounded strangely through the shadowy belfry. Thus it seemed to speak, in words curiously pertinent to the moment, though Toby seemed to have heard them before in other connection and in other circumstances.
THE CHIMES.
Mr. Punch. "NOW THEN, MY LADS! ALL TOGETHER FOR ONCE!—CHRISTMAS TIME, YOU KNOW!!"
"The Voice of Time cries to Man, Advance! Time is for his advancement and improvement; for his greater worth, his greater happiness, his better life; his progress onward to that goal within its knowledge and its view, and set there in the period when Time and he began. Ages of darkness, wickedness, and violence have come and gone—millions uncountable have suffered, loved, and died—to point the way before him. Who seeks to turn him back, or stay him in his course, arrests a mighty engine which will strike the meddler dead, and be the fiercer and the wilder, ever, for its momentary check!"