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Amongst these retired spots none are more suggestive than the old churchyards all blurred and dim with London smoke, but yet in which a few trees yearly put forth green leaves of little promise, and a choir of sooty sparrows chirp around the queer old steeples or perch impudently upon the leaden ornaments which adorn the sacred porch.
The stars in the skies above were disappearing, and from the east a faint streak of light lit the shadows of the night and announced the approach of day. She had not walked far before she saw in the distance a black mass silhouetted against the dawning light to the grey sky. Chimneys, houses and steeples rose up in the coming dawn, leaving the rest of the landscape obscure in the shadows.
"Undoubtedly; we are six leagues from Frankfort." "Then we must descend." "Descend! you would not alight upon the steeples!" said the unknown, mockingly. "No; but in the environs of the city." "Well, it is too warm; let us remount a little." As he spoke thus, he seized some bags of ballast.
The quick puffs of smoke, touched in the centre with tongues of flame, ran incessantly along the lines of their batteries on the slopes, and, as the smoke slowly drifted away, the bellowing roar came up in one continuous roll. The town was soon fired, and a dense cloud of smoke enveloped its roofs and steeples.
'Sewis! you're the man, are you: where has it broken out? 'No, sir; no fire, said Sewis; 'you be cool, sir. 'Cool, sir! confound it, Sewis, haven't I heard a whole town of steeples at work? I don't sleep so thick but I can hear, you dog! Fellow comes here, gives me a start, tells me to be cool; what the deuce! nobody hurt, then? all right!
The setting rays, diversely reflected on masses of different greens, produced a magnificent harmony of melancholy tones. At the farther end of the valley a sheet of sparkling water ruffled by the breeze brought out the brown stretch of roofs in the suburb of Saint-Etienne. The steeples and roofs of Saint-Martial, bathed in light, showed through the tracery of the grape-vine arbor.
"This habit of travelling by night has caused a great many of these beautiful Warblers to lose their lives, for they often fly against telegraph wires, high steeples, and lighthouse towers, and are killed.
"Was the mountain as high as the church steeple?" asked Marmaduke. "Oh, higher than that as high as a lot of church steeples, stuck one on top of another," the Toyman explained. "Sometimes the King of the Winds took a little snooze in his cave, and then everything was quiet. But when he woke up he would go out of his cave, raisin' ructions all over the world.
An observer is doubtless more at his ease in a clock-tower than in a frail basket floating in mid-air; but steeples are not always at hand in the vicinity of battle-fields, and they cannot be transported at pleasure. There is still another method of signaling, by the use of large fires kindled upon elevated points of the country.
Beacons and bonfires were lighted, the bells from all the steeples rang their merriest peals, cannon thundered in triumph not only in Antwerp itself, but subsequently at Amsterdam and other more distant cities. In due time a magnificent banquet was spread in the town-house to greet the conquering Hohenlo.
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