“Ah! then we shall have fine weather, and lasting for the revel.” “Hope so,” said the mason. “It is really distressing—I can now never tell the way of the wind. It is as bad as having a kitchen clock as won’t work. That there church stag——” Mrs. French never spoke of the weathercock, but used the local term for a cock, which throughout Devon is invariably—a stag. “Ah!” said Newbold. “Well, now,” said Westcott. “It really do seem a burnin’ shame to have the poor unfort’nate bird lyin’ on his back and kickin’ at the clouds, and that, too, on the day of the parish feast. What will folk say of us? That we’ve no public spirit left. The farmers might get up a subscription. Would it be so amazin’ expensive? Would they have to scaffold all the tower up, and to the top of the spire?” “That’s the way masons ’ud set about it,” said Jack Westcott contemptuously. “And pray how ’ud sailors do it?” “Swarm up,” said Jack. “Get along! That wouldn’t do it.” “Yes, it would, I bet a guinea. I might, but you——” The sailor shrugged his shoulders. “For the matter of that,” observed the builder, after musing a while, “I don’t see but what it might be done, and done at no terrible cost. There’s a sort of a window on each side of the spire, and I suppose it would be possible to run out planks and make a sort of a platform and set up a ladder agin the steeple.” “Would it not be dangerous?” “Oh, of course there’s nothing in that way without danger. But if it has to be done, it can be done.” “I warrant I’d get up without any of your arrangements,” said the mariner. “I daresay you might,” responded the builder slowly; “but what good would that be? You’ve more to do than spike a Jacky Tar at the top; you’ve got to remove the spindle, and that must be roped and let down with caution. There’s a deal of things belonging to all things,” said Newbold sententiously, “and that’s what escapes the likes of you.” “I bet I’d do it!” said the sailor. “I bet so would I!” said the mason. “But,” added the latter, “I ain’t going to risk my precious life and sacrifice time and labour for nothin’.” “Now look here,” said Westcott, “there be you and me hoverin’ round about this here lovely creetur, each sunnin’ of ourselves in her beamin’ eyes and neither on us gettin’ no closer, and both of us lusty fellows, one accustomed to masts and other to scaffold-poles——” “I take you,” interrupted the mason; “we between us is to set the weathercock to rights out of love to this adorable female.” “Not just precisely that,” said the mariner. “Between us won’t do. What if we each went up the steeple simultaneous, and from opposite sides? Wouldn’t the distance atween us be every foot of ascent lessenin’ and lessenin’, till our faces met at the top? And I bet a guinea we wouldn’t kiss there; we’d come to a grapple.” “Really,” said the widow, with a shudder, “this is startling. A contest on the pinnacle of the spire between you—and all for me. I ain’t worth it.”