Not till she opened a little door I had passed without
observing it as we came up, was I reminded of my first object in ascending
the tower. For this door revealed a number of bells hanging in silent power
in the brown twilight of the place. I entered carefully, for there were
only some planks laid upon the joists to keep one's feet from going through
the ceiling. In a few moments I had satisfied myself that my conjecture
about the keys below was correct. The small iron rods I had seen from
beneath hung down from this place. There were more of them hanging shorter
above, and there was yet enough of a further mechanism remaining to prove
that those keys, by means of the looped and cranked rods, had been in
connection with hammers, one of them indeed remaining also, which struck
the bells, so that a tune could be played upon them as upon any other keyed
instrument. This was the first contrivance of the kind I had ever seen,
though I have heard of it in other churches since.
"If I could find a clever blacksmith in the neighbourhood, now," I said to
myself, "I would get this all repaired, so that it should not interfere
with the bell-ringing when the ringers were to be had, and yet Shepherd
could play a psalm tune to his parish at large when he pleased.
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