Sometimes he
paused under the low-hanging arms of the trees, looking vacantly
on the ground.
Stephen was standing thus, scarcely less crippled in thought than
he was blank in vision, when a clear sound permeated the quiet air
about him, and spread on far beyond. The sound was the stroke of
a bell from the tower of East Endelstow Church, which stood in a
dell not forty yards from Lord Luxellian's mansion, and within the
park enclosure. Another stroke greeted his ear, and gave
character to both: then came a slow succession of them.
'Somebody is dead,' he said aloud.
The death-knell of an inhabitant of the eastern parish was being
tolled.
An unusual feature in the tolling was that it had not been begun
according to the custom in Endelstow and other parishes in the
neighbourhood. At every death the sex and age of the deceased
were announced by a system of changes. Three times three strokes
signified that the departed one was a man; three times two, a
woman; twice three, a boy; twice two, a girl. The regular
continuity of the tolling suggested that it was the resumption
rather than the beginning of a knell--the opening portion of which
Stephen had not been near enough to hear.
The momentary anxiety he had felt with regard to his parents
passed away. He had left them in perfect health, and had any
serious illness seized either, a communication would have reached
him ere this.
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