them their trouble was not in vain; it seemed to invite all those who
waited and were anxious to trust their care to Him and seek repose. It was
all this, and much more, to many people: and yet, when it spread in
another direction over the fields, it meant nothing to the yawning
ploughman, either musical or poetical, had no significance whatever for
him if it were not of the time of day, gathered, however, with the help of
sundry other sensations of which hunger and fatigue were chief. It
probably conveyed as much, and neither more nor less, to the team he
drove.

But perhaps of all the affairs of life with which the chime had mingled,
the most remarkable, could they be collected and recorded, would be the
occasions on which the hearing of the message had marked a turning point
in the career of some one person, as happened, once on a summer afternoon,
when it was heard by a Lancashire collier--a young lad with an unkempt mop
of golden hair, delicate features, and limbs which were too refined for
his calling, who was coming up the River Morne on a barge.

The river winds for a time through a fertile undulating bit of country,
and nothing of the city can be seen until you are almost in it, except the
castle of the Duke of Morningquest, high perched on a hill on the farther
side, and the spire of the cathedral, which might not attract your
attention, however, if it were not pointed out to you above the trees.
When the chime floated over this sparsely peopled tract, filling the air
with music, but coming from no one could tell whence, there was something
mysterious in the sound of it to an imaginative listener in so apparently
remote a place; and once, twice, as the long hours passed, the young
collier heard it ring, and wondered. He had nothing to do but listen, and
watch the man on the bank who led the horse that was towing the barge; or
address a rare remark to his solitary companion--an old sailor, dressed in