The Chimes | Page 2

score of nimble legs to save one life!
High up in the steeple of an old church, far above the light and murmur of the town and
far below the flying clouds that shadow it, is the wild and dreary place at night: and high
up in the steeple of an old church, dwelt the Chimes I tell of.
They were old Chimes, trust me. Centuries ago, these Bells had been baptized by bishops:
so many centuries ago, that the register of their baptism was lost long, long before the
memory of man, and no one knew their names. They had had their Godfathers and
Godmothers, these Bells (for my own part, by the way, I would rather incur the
responsibility of being Godfather to a Bell than a Boy), and had their silver mugs no
doubt, besides. But Time had mowed down their sponsors, and Henry the Eighth had
melted down their mugs; and they now hung, nameless and mugless, in the church-
tower.
Not speechless, though. Far from it. They had clear, loud, lusty, sounding voices, had
these Bells; and far and wide they might be heard upon the wind. Much too sturdy
Chimes were they, to be dependent on the pleasure of the wind, moreover; for, fighting
gallantly against it when it took an adverse whim, they would pour their cheerful notes
into a listening ear right royally; and bent on being heard on stormy nights, by some poor
mother watching a sick child, or some lone wife whose husband was at sea, they had been
sometimes known to beat a blustering Nor' Wester; aye, 'all to fits,' as Toby Veck
said;--for though they chose to call him Trotty Veck, his name was Toby, and nobody
could make it anything else either (except Tobias) without a special act of parliament; he
having been as lawfully christened in his day as the Bells had been in theirs, though with
not quite so much of solemnity or public rejoicing.
For my part, I confess myself of Toby Veck's belief, for I am sure he had opportunities
enough of forming a correct one. And whatever Toby Veck said, I say. And I take my
stand by Toby Veck, although he DID stand all day long (and weary work it was) just
outside the church-door. In fact he was a ticket-porter, Toby Veck, and waited there for
jobs.
And a breezy, goose-skinned, blue-nosed, red-eyed, stony-toed, tooth-chattering place it
was, to wait in, in the winter-time, as Toby Veck well knew. The wind came tearing
round the corner-- especially the east wind--as if it had sallied forth, express, from the
confines of the earth, to have a blow at Toby. And oftentimes it seemed to come upon
him sooner than it had expected, for bouncing round the corner, and passing Toby, it
would suddenly wheel round again, as if it cried 'Why, here he is!' Incontinently his little
white apron would be caught up over his head like a naughty boy's garments, and his
feeble little cane would be seen to wrestle and struggle unavailingly in his hand, and his
legs would undergo tremendous agitation, and Toby himself all aslant, and facing now in
this direction, now in that, would be so banged and buffeted, and to touzled, and worried,
and hustled, and lifted off his feet, as to render it a state of things but one degree removed
from a positive miracle, that he wasn't carried up bodily into the air as a colony of frogs
or snails or other very portable creatures sometimes are, and rained down again, to the
great astonishment of the natives, on some strange corner of the world where ticket-

porters are unknown.
But, windy weather, in spite of its using him so roughly, was, after all, a sort of holiday
for Toby. That's the fact. He didn't seem to wait so long for a sixpence in the wind, as at
other times; the having to fight with that boisterous element took off his attention, and
quite freshened him up, when he was getting hungry and low-spirited. A hard frost too, or
a fall of snow, was an Event; and it seemed to do him good, somehow or other--it would
have been hard to say in what respect though, Toby! So wind and frost and snow, and
perhaps a good stiff storm of hail, were Toby Veck's red-letter days.
Wet weather was the worst; the cold, damp, clammy wet, that wrapped him up like a
moist great-coat--the only kind of great-coat Toby owned, or could have added to his
comfort by dispensing with. Wet days, when the rain came slowly, thickly, obstinately
down; when the street's throat, like his own, was choked with mist; when smoking
umbrellas passed and re-passed, spinning round and round like so many