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238 not to remark the mood which he lacked energy to reprimand. And so he began to nurse the small remains of fire yet lurking in the smouldering wood-ashes, which revived as the red sunbeams were lost in the masses of black clouds now gathered in piles upon the west. A pale clear flame had just coloured the thick white smoke, when Lord Avonleigh started up into a listening attitude of intense attention, exclaiming, "St. Paul's bell is tolling!"

He was right. Heavily and gloomily the mighty sound swept along the Thames, and was answered, as one church after another repeated the melancholy peal. Dull, loud, and monotonous, stroke after stroke fell like a weight upon the ear: the whole atmosphere seemed oppressed with the invisible but conscious presence of Death. "They are tolling," ejaculated Lord Avonleigh, in a subdued voice, "for the death of Cromwell."

"For Cromwell's death?" cried Albert, his eyes flashing, and his cheek colouring, like a young gladiator in the first flush of his ferocious triumph—"for Cromwell's death? Why it is the bravest peal that ever rang from the steeples of London. Out upon their dastardly tolling! Why don't they ring the bells merrily, and cry, 'Long live King Charles the Second!'"