The examination took most of the morning.
Samuel worked methodically, moving around the movement frame with his torch and his fingertips, cataloguing the condition of each component with the systematic care that had kept the workshop profitable for five decades. He had brought a small notebook, and he wrote his findings in the large, careful handwriting he had adopted when the central vision first began to fail — letters tall enough to read in his own peripheral field.
The main driving weight and chain: intact but seized. Thirty years of inertia had compressed the lubricant in the pivot holes to a gummy varnish.
The great wheel: sound. The teeth were worn at the tips from decades of use, but within serviceable tolerances.
The pinion train: good condition throughout. The intermediate wheels had been re-bushed at the last overhaul in 1988 and still ran true.
The escapement: this was the heart of the problem. The anchor pallet faces were heavily worn, the impulse faces uneven from years of operation before the final breakdown. The worn pallets had been driving the pendulum unevenly for years before the weight chain finally failed — it was the real reason the clock had lost several minutes per week in its final years of operation.
The pendulum itself was intact — a massive iron rod with a lead-filled brass bob, suspended from the movement frame by a thin spring suspension — but the beat regulation needed complete resetting.
Samuel made his notes and clipped the notebook closed.
Copper had maintained his position in the corner throughout, watching with the steady patience of a trained observer. Now he rose and walked to Samuel's side, pressing his warm flank against Samuel's leg.
"Right," Samuel said to the dog. "Here is what I know. The escapement pallets need replacing — I can have new ones machined in Shrewsbury within a week. The pivot holes need cleaning and re-oiling. The weight chain needs uncoiling and re-hanging. The pendulum beat needs resetting from scratch."
He paused, looking at the escapement through the torch beam. The impulse faces caught the light, their worn surfaces reflecting a faint iridescence.
"And here is what I am not certain of," he continued. "The final beat regulation requires me to read a seconds dial at arm's length while making adjustments I cannot feel through my fingers. That is the part that requires the vision I no longer have."
He had spent the entire morning not thinking about his eyes, and the focus had done him good — the mechanical problem had a clarity that his medical situation did not. He knew what the movement needed. The question was still whether he could give it what it needed.
Copper moved away from his side, crossed the chamber, and placed his front paws on the sill of the small east-facing window. The window looked out over the village square, and the morning light fell through it in a pale, clean rectangle on the stone floor.
Samuel watched the dog for a moment.
He crossed to the window and stood beside Copper, looking out. In his peripheral vision, the square was perfectly clear — the market cross, the pub, the alleyway down to the bakery, and, directly opposite, the face of the south clock dial, its hands frozen at seventeen minutes past three.
From this height, the clock face was at the same level as the window. The numerals were large, bold, and deeply incised — far easier to read than the tiny marks on an escapement pallet.
An idea began to take shape.
He turned and looked back at the movement frame. He could see the pendulum bob perfectly in his peripheral vision. He could see the great-wheel's teeth. He could see the general layout of the entire movement without difficulty.
What he could not do was position his eye directly above the pallet faces to inspect them under close magnification.
But what if there was another way to read what he needed?
He looked at Copper, still standing with his forepaws on the window sill.
"You have better eyes than I do," Samuel said.
The dog's tail moved once.
"I wonder," Samuel said quietly, "if we can teach each other something new."
He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a small brass spirit level — a tool he always carried for setting pendulum suspension springs. He placed it on the window sill beside Copper's right paw.
The bubble sat exactly in the centre of the glass tube.