in the early Victorian stained-glass window yonder.... And this pompous gentleman, occasionally elevating his brows over his thoughts, must be a banker, computing the cost—probably adding compound interest for seven hundred years—of an edifice like this. It was plain that the problem bothered him.... And the pale young man in the wheel chair. Well, he seemed to be just gazing up there among the shadowy groins, his thoughts climbing dizzy heights too, leaving the poor, pain-anchored body helplessly behind in the chair....
When suddenly the great bells in the tower began to clamor, wildly, like Poe's "Iron Bells," scattering my idle thoughts like guilty vagrants. Between whiles the air began to echo with the plaintive, scampering notes and discords of tuning instruments with an occasional mournful drone from the kettledrums. The bells gave pause and the tuning seemed suddenly to slink away through the fissures in the thick walls, as the organ thundered out a rumbling prelude that set the whole place shuddering with its vibrations. Again silence.
We could not see it coming. It struck our wandering senses with astonishment. A silence-shattering blast of music—brass, strings, reeds and drums in unison. Brahms! It swooped down and caught us all up—charwoman, draper,
