e, lying among the
straw, was an equally impressive wax-work figure of a prisoner,
wretched, unkempt, and bound hand and foot with chains. A pitcher of
water lay by his side, and a stuffed rat peering from the straw added a
further touch of realism. Winona shuddered. It was a ghastly sight, and
she was thankful to run up the stairs and go from the keep out into the
spring sunshine. She had always had a romantic admiration for the Middle
Ages, but this aspect of thirteenth-century life did not commend itself
to her. "They were bad old times, after all!" she decided, and came to
the conclusion that the twentieth century, even with its horrible war,
was a more humane period to live in.

At the foot of the crag, close by the river, lay the remains of the old
Priory Church, an ivy-covered fabric, whose broken chancel still gave a
shelter to the battered tombs of the knights who had lived in the Castle
above. Sir Bevis and Dame Philippa lay here in marble, their features
calm and rigid, their hands folded in prayer, less human indeed, but
infinitely grander than in their wax effigies of the tower. Seven
centuries of sunshine and storm had passed over their heads, and castle
and church were alike in ruins.

"Their bones are dust,
Their good swords rust,
Their souls are with the Saints, we trust,"

thought Winona, as she took a photograph of the quiet scene. It was
deeply interesting, but on this glorious lovely spring day it seemed a
little too sad. With all the birds singing, and the hedges in bud, and
the daisies showing white stars among the grass, she wanted to live in
the present, and not in the past. And yet, if we think about it rightly,
the past is never really sad. Those who lived before us accomplished
their work, and have passed onwards--a part of the world scheme--to, we
doubt not, fuller and worthier work beyond. We, still in the preparatory
class of God's great school, cannot yet grasp the higher forms, but
those who have been moved up surely smile at our want of comprehension,
and look back on this earth as the College undergraduate remembers his
kindergarten; for the spiritual evolution goes ever on, working always
Godwards, and when the human dross falls away, the imperfect and the
partial will be merged into the perfect and the eternal. The broken
eggshells may lie in the old nest, but the fledged larks are singing in
the blue of the sky.

From the little town of Wickborough they drove along