squat Perpendicular building of two aisles, the wider divided into nave and chancel merely by a granite step in the flooring; he saw it consecrated, and returned to his home and died.  And the church steadily decayed.  He had mixed his mortar with sea-sand.  The stonework oozed brine, the plaster fell piece-meal; the blown sand penetrated like water; the foundations sank a foot on the south side, and the whole structure took a list to leeward.  The living passed into the hands of the Dean and Chapter of Exeter, and from them, in 1730, to the Moyles.  Mr. Raymond’s predecessor was a kinsman of theirs by marriage, a pluralist, who lived and died at the other end of the Duchy.  He had sent curates from time to time; the last of whom was dead, three years since, of solitude and drink.  But he never came himself, Squire Moyle having threatened to set the dogs on him if ever he set foot in Nannizabuloe; for there had been some dispute over a dowry.  The result was that nobody went to church, though a parson from the next parish held an occasional service.  The people were Wesleyan Methodists or Bryanites.  Each sect had its own chapel in the fishing village of Innis, on the western side of the parish; and the Bryanites a second one, at the cross-roads behind the downs, for the miners and warreners and scattered farmfolk.

Ding—­ding—­ding—­ding—­ding.

It was Sunday morning, and Taffy was sounding the bell, by a thin rope tied to its clapper.  The heavy bell-rope would be ready next week; but Humility must first contrive a woollen binding for it, to prevent its chafing the ringer’s hands.

Out on the towans the rabbits heard the sound, and ran scampering.  Others, farther away, paused in their feeding, and listened with cocked ears.

Ding—­ding—­ding.

Mr. Raymond stood in the belfry at the boy’s elbow.  He wore his surplice, and held his prayer-book, with a finger between the pages.  Glancing down toward the nave, he saw Humility sitting in the big vicarage pew—­no other soul in church.

He took the cord from Taffy, “Run to the door, and see if anyone is coming.”

Taffy ran, and after a minute came back.

“There’s Squire Moyle coming along the path, and the little girl with him, and some servants behind—­five or six of them.  Bill Udy’s one.”

“Nobody else?”

“I expect the people don’t hear the bell,” said Taffy.  “They live too far away.”

“God hears.  Yes, and God sees the lamp is lit.”

“What lamp?” Taffy looked up at his father’s face, wondering.

“All towers carry a lamp of some kind.  For what else are they built?”

It was exactly the tone in which he had spoken that afternoon at Tewkesbury about men being like towers.  Both these sentences puzzled the boy; and yet Taffy never felt so near to understanding him as he had then, and did again now.  He was shy of his father.  He did not know that his father was just as shy of him.  He began to ring with all his soul—­ding—­ding-ding, ding-ding.