"That, I suppose, we shall never positively know; but in all probability it was a monk, who, having considerable leisure at his command and perhaps being held responsible for the ringing of the monastery bell once in so often, bethought himself of a scheme whereby the bell could be made to ring without him. History tells us that William, Abbott of Hirschau, who died toward the end of the eleventh century, invented a horologium modeled after the celestial hemisphere; therefore he may have been the inventor of the clock, for soon after his death these striking bells begin to make their appearance on church towers and in other religious buildings. "A couple of centuries later we read of clocks being sent as presents. Sultan Saladin sent to Emperor Frederick II a very ambitious article which by means of weights and wheels not only indicated the hours but the course of the sun, moon, and planets. Now who invented such an affair as that we do not know. It must, however, have been some ingenious Saracen who certainly could have heard nothing about the Abbott of Hirschau and his striking bells. Indeed, when one considers the superstition of the age, we cannot but grant it was almost fortunate a clock such as ours was not then invented, for people were great believers in witchcraft and were liable to attribute to evil spirits anything they did not understand, and forthwith destroy it." "How ridiculous!" scoffed Christopher. "They were children, remember--intellectual children--ignorant as babies because, poor souls, they had had neither books nor teaching. Savages are, you know, terrified at a thing they cannot fathom and these persons were as yet little more. Well, at any rate, clocks began to make their appearance. By 1286 one of these faceless mechanisms was put up on St. Paul's Cathedral in London; and before 1300, others were, by order of the clergy, installed at Canterbury and Westminster." "And these just chimed or struck?" "That is all. On some was a single bell; on others crudely carved wooden figures beat out the hour on a series of bells. All these were known as 'clocks,' the term 'horologe' not yet being in common use." "Horologe!" repeated Christopher slowly. "You don't suppose that word has anything to do with the Latin _hora_, meaning hour, do you?" "I suppose it has a good deal," McPhearson returned with a dry smile. "Really!" Plainly Christopher was delighted by this discovery. "Well, well! Old Caesar, Esquire, isn't so bad, after all. _Hora!_ I never expected to see the day that stuff would be of any earthly use." "I told you all you needed to do with what you learn is to link it to something else." "But I never seemed to be able to hook it on before," confided the lad frankly. "Gee, but it makes me chesty! I'm pleased to death with myself!" To save himself the old Scotchman could not but chuckle at his companion's naive satisfaction.