Entering the tower by the narrow nail-studded door, it is not so easy to ascend the winding geometrical stone staircase, in the confined space and the darkness, for the arrow-slits are choked with cobwebs and the dust of years. A faint fluttering sound comes from above, as of wings beating the air in a confined space--it is the jackdaws in the belfry; just as the starlings and swallows in the huge old-fashioned chimneys make a similar murmuring noise before they settle. Passing a slit or two--the only means of marking the height which has been reached--and the dull tick of the old clock becomes audible: slow and accompanied with a peculiar grating vibration, as if the frame of the antique works had grown tremulous with age. The dial-plate outside is square, placed at an angle to the perpendicular lines of the tower: the gilding of the hour-marks has long since tarnished and worn away before the storms, and they are now barely distinguishable; and it is difficult to tell the precise time by the solitary pointer, there being no minute hand. Past another slit, and the narrow stone steps--you must take care to keep close to the outer wall where they are widest, for they narrow to the central pillar--are scooped out by the passage of feet during the centuries; some, too, are broken, and others are slippery with something that rolls and gives under the foot. It is a number of little sticks and twigs which have fallen down from the jackdaws' nests above: higher up the steps are literally covered with them, so that you have to kick them aside before you can conveniently ascend. These sticks are nearly all of the same size, brown and black from age and the loss of the sap, the bark remaining on. It is surprising how the birds contrive to find so many suitable to their purpose, searching about under the trees; for they do not break them off, but take those that have fallen. The best place for finding these sticks--and those the rooks use--is where a tree has been felled or a thick hedge cut some months before. In cutting up the smaller branches into faggots the men necessarily frequently step on them, and so break off innumerable twigs too short to be tied up in the bundle. After they have finished faggoting, the women rake up the fragments for their cottage fires; and later on, as the spring advances, the birds come for the remaining twigs, of which great quantities are left. These they pick up from among the grass; and it is noticeable that they like twigs that are dead but not decayed: they do not care for them when green, and reject them when rotten. Have they discovered that green wood shrinks in drying, and that rotten wood is untrustworthy? Rooks, jackdaws, and pigeons find their building materials in this way, where trees or hedges have been cut; yet even then it must require some patience. They use also a great deal of material rearranged from the nests of last year--that is, rooks and jackdaws.