Now over the colossal stone oxen hung the bells of the Cathedral.  On Christmas Eve the ringers, according to the old custom, ascended to their gallery to ring in the birth of the Babe Divine.  At the moment of midnight the master ringer gave the word, and the great bells began to swing in joyful sequence.  Down below in the crowded church lay the image of the new-born Child on the cold straw, and at His haloed head stood the images of the ox and the ass.  Far out across the snow-roofed city, far away over the white glistening country rang the glad music of the tower.  People who went to their doors to listen cried in astonishment: "Hark! what strange music is that?  It sounds as if the lowing of cattle were mingled with the chimes of the bells."  In truth it was so.  And in every byre the oxen and the kine answered the strange sweet cadences with their lowing, and the great stone oxen lowed back to their kin of the meadow through the deep notes of the joy-peal.