Produced by Al Haines BELLES AND RINGERS BY HAWLEY SMART, AUTHOR OF "BOUND TO WIN;" "FALSE CARDS;" "TWO KISSES;" "COURTSHIP," ETC. NEW EDITION. LEVER BROTHERS, LTD., PORT SUNLIGHT, NEAR BIRKENHEAD. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. TODBOROUGH GRANGE CHAPTER II. THE CONSPIRATORS TRIUMPH CHAPTER III. THE COMMONSTONE BALL CHAPTER IV. THE ROCKCLIFFE GAMES CHAPTER V. AN EXCURSION TO TROTBURY CHAPTER VI. A SHORT CUT HOME CHAPTER VII. "THE PLAY'S THE THING!" CHAPTER VIII. MRS. WRIOTHESLEY CHAPTER IX. SATURDAY AT HURLINGHAM CHAPTER X. MRS. WRIOTHESLEY'S LITTLE DINNER CHAPTER XI. THE RINGING OF THE BELLES BELLES AND RINGERS. CHAPTER I. TODBOROUGH GRANGE. Todborough Grange, the seat of Cedric Bloxam, Justice of the Peace, and whilom High Sheriff for East Fernshire, lies low. The original Bloxam, like the majority of our ancestors, had apparently a great dislike to an exposed situation; and either a supreme contempt for the science of sanitation, or a confused idea that water could be induced to run uphill, and so, not bothering his head on the subject of drainage, as indeed no one did in those days, he built his house in a hole, holding, I presume, that the hills were as good to look up at as the valleys to look down upon. It was an irregular pile of gabled red brick, of what could be only described as the composite order, having been added to by successive Bloxams at their own convenience, and without any regard to architectural design. It was surrounded by thick shrubberies, in which the laurels were broken by dense masses of rhododendrons. Beyond these again were several plantations, and up the hill on the east side of the house stretched a wood of some eighty acres or so in extent.