14 A DOG OF FLANDERS.

whose single bell rang morning, noon,
and night with that strange, subdued,
hollow sadness which every bell that
hangs in the Low Countries seems to
gain asan integral part of its melody.

Within sound of the little melan-
choly clock, almost from their birth
upward, they had dwelt together,
Nello and Patrasche, in the little hut
on the edge of the village, with the
cathedral spire of Antwerp rising in
the north-east, beyond the great green
plain of seeding grass and spreading
corn that stretched away from them
like a tideless, changeless sea. It
was the hut of avery old man, of a
very poor man—of old Jehan Daas,
who in his time had been a soldier, and
who remembered the wars that had