of bread, and even bunches of flowers.

"It looks just as if the Gorgon had stared at them and petrified them
with a glance," said Nora.

"I wonder, if we were hung up, should we turn solid too?" said Lindsay.

The caretaker of the well had many specimens to show them which he had
polished, and was anxious to sell. There was quite a large collection in
his cottage. The girls, after hastily conferring together, bought a
stone bouquet as a birthday present for Miss Russell, an offering which
she declared should grace the school museum when they returned to
Winterburn Lodge.

"I thought she'd have put it in the drawing-room," said Beryl Austen,
rather disappointed.

"Well, of course it is more of a curiosity than an ornament," said
Mildred Roper. "It wouldn't have looked very beautiful decorating the
mantel-piece, I'm afraid--not nearly so nice as a real bunch of
flowers."

Close to the well was a cave in the cliff which a hermit had once used
for his cell--a very picturesque spot to have chosen for his
meditations, so the girls decided.

"But horribly damp; the poor man must have been racked with rheumatism,"
said Miss Frazer, who was of a practical mind.

"Perhaps, like Friar Tuck, he didn't often use it, and preferred to hunt
venison in the woods," suggested Kathleen Crawford.

"No, he was a really devout hermit, who told his beads, and lived on
bread and water," said Monica. "He dug his own grave in the rock about a
hundred yards from here. You can see it still, though his bones have
long ago been taken away for relics."

"I wonder if they petrified them first in the well," said Nora Proctor,
"and how much they sold them for? There are more than two hundred bones
in the human body, so a hermit ought to have been worth a good deal when
he was properly divided."

"You naughty, irreverent girl!" said Monica.

Tea had been prepared at the old-fashioned inn in the market square.
Afterwards they went to look through the church, where there were some
fine examples of Gothic carving, and several beautiful stained-glass
windows. One in particular, which Monica pointed out, was in memory of a
member of the Courtenay family. There was a chained Bible, besides a
black-letter Prayer Book, a pair of tongs for turning dogs out of
church, and several other curiosities shown by the old verger; so time
passed rapidly, and everyone was quite surprised when Miss Russell
looked at her watch, and announced that they must be r