"Not safe!" cried Laura incredulously. She had seen the old place shored up with timber so long that the spectacle had lost all its significance. "What nonsense! I'm sure it's just as safe as it ever was, and I particularly want my friend to see it. So give me the key, please, and we'll go."
"I haven't got it, miss, indeed. Master took it away, and left word nobody was to go inside."
The spoilt heiress, unaccustomed to opposition, turned upon her heel in high dudgeon. "Then I can only say your master is a most arbitrary and disagreeable man!" she cried angrily. "Mr. Percival is just like all the rest of the clergy, Daisy!" she grumbled to her friend as they went away. "They love to show their power by tyrannising over the laity! I don't believe the church is really unsafe at all! Probably the Rector thinks that because I won't go to his services on Sundays I don't deserve to enter the church on weekdays, and so I am to be refused the key!"
Angry people are very seldom dignified; and Laura, knowing that Daisy was keenly interested in architecture, was determined to try and accomplish her project somehow. "After all, I'm a parishioner, and I've a right to enter the church!" she exclaimed. "The old sexton has a key, and we'll go and get his, since that cross woman refused the Rector's."
But the sexton was out. As no answer was returned to her knocks, Laura, who was well acquainted with his habits, tried the door, which was unfastened, and, looking in, saw the large church key hanging on its accustomed nail in his little kitchen. She snatched at it in triumph, and hastened to the churchyard; only to find her progress once more barred.
"Mr. Percival has actually gone and locked the gate!" she exclaimed, descending to slipshod English in her excitement. "Now, I should say that must be distinctly illegal! At any rate, here goes!"
They vaulted over, with the agility of modern girls practised in gymnastics, and very soon were inside the church. The dust was thicker than ever, but in the excitement of displaying the various points of interest Laura hardly noticed it; and they poked about everywhere, little dreaming of the appalling risk they ran.
Llewellyn, on quitting the school, came round to speak to Reed; and found the old man, who had just returned, standing staring stupidly at the bare nail on the wall. "Did you come and fetch the church key away, sir?" he began.
"I? I've never touched it—never seen it! And yet it's gone from the nail! Surely it can't be that somebody has taken it to go inside the church! Lane says the tower can't possibly last out the day."
For an instant they gazed at each other with scared faces; and then Llewellyn rushed away, mad with fear, clearing first the churchyard fence, and then the tombstones with incredible bounds. As he went a curious, dull rumble was audible, and to his horror he distinctly saw the massive tower first sway slightly, and then commence to slip, slip with a horrible motion unlike anything he had ever seen before. The church door was ajar—there must be somebody inside! Pray Heaven he might be in time!