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The Conqueror knew very well how much discontent must have arisen from the great revolutions which his conquest produced in all men's property, and in the general tenor of the government. He, therefore, as much as possible to guard against every sudden attempt, forbade any light or fire to continue in any house after a certain bell, called curfew, had sounded.

Nightfall night hung like a pall over the island, over the moat, over the silent heath and woods; the snow kept falling, falling; the fires kept blazing in the huge hearths; and the bell kept tolling until curfew time, by the prior's order, that if any were lost in the wild night they might be guided by its sound to shelter.

We all know what fact of English history is laid up in 'curfew, or 'couvre-feu. The 'limner, or 'illuminer, for so we find the word in Fuller, throws us back on a time when the illumination of manuscripts was a leading occupation of the painter. To 'subscribe' the name would more accurately express what now we do.

The chancel was added in 1874. A Norman doorway at the west end should be noticed. The tower of the church shows traces of the Royalist attack on the town in 1642. St. Peter's Church, not far from the College, is Perpendicular, and from its high and finely designed tower, curfew still rings each night through the year.

What's the good of curfew, and poor devils of bell-ringers jumping at a rope's-end in bell-towers? What's the use of day, if people sit up all night? The gripes to them!" He grinned as he saw where his logic was leading him. "Every man to his business, after all," added he, "and if they're awake, by the lord, I may come by a supper honestly for this once, and cheat the devil."

Here Nature, grown miserly, offered not even a stick of timber to mend a broken cart-pole in all the thousand miles between the Neosho and the Spanish settlement of New Mexico. Here the Indians came with their furs and beaded garments to exchange for firearms and fire-water. People fastened their doors at night for a purpose. No curfew bell was needed to call in the children.

The delays of the law were not as yet invented; the physical and astronomical sciences had not as yet established their calculations on scrupulously exact measurements; there were neither establishments which were shut at a given hour, nor trains which departed at a precise moment. In the evening the curfew bell sounded; and at night the hours were cried amid the universal silence.

He wrote one vol. of poems, pub. 1860, which attained wide popularity in the South. He had notable descriptive power. Dramatist, was for long unsuccessful, but in the year of his death made a hit with The Honey Moon, which had great success, and maintained its place for many years. Other plays were The Curfew and The School for Authors.

Lottie Price stopped short three times in reciting "Curfew must not ring to-night," and had to be helped from behind the sheets by Miss Hillary. No one felt very sorry, for, as Teenie Robertson said, "Lottie Price was just showing off, anyhow, and it served her right."

In the damp garden the water drips sadly. The bugle of the firemen sounds the curfew. "Go and look at No. 7," says the mistress, "he will never have done with his bath." The attendant goes, and utters a cry of fright, of horror: "Oh, madame, he is dead! But it is not the same man."