If you would touch a Novocastrian on his most sensitive spot, praise or criticise the cathedral church of St. Nicholas, and he will plume himself or lose his temper, as the case may be. That building, and especially its tower, with the wonderful stone crown supported on ribbed arches and set about with its cluster of thirteen pinnacles, is the apple of Newcastle’s eye. It figures as a stock decorative heading in the Newcastle papers, and does duty in a hundred other ways. Built toward the close of the sixteenth century, that fairy-like corona has had its escapes, as when, during the stubborn defence in 1644, under the Royalist Sir John Marley, the Scottish general, Alexander Leslie, Lord Leven, commanding the besieging forces, threatened to batter it down with his cannon if the town were not at once surrendered. To this Sir John Marley made the very practical reply of causing all his Scottish prisoners to be placed in the tower, and sent word to the besiegers that they might, if they would, destroy it, but that their friends should perish at the same time. The “Thief and Reiver” bell, a relic of old times when the outlaws of Northumberland were given short shrift wherever and whenever found, is still rung before the opening of the annual fair, and recalls the old custom of giving those gentry immunity from arrest during fair-time; but it would probably not be safe for any one “wanted” by the police to rely upon this sentimental survival. [Picture: “Puffing Billy”] XXVI