mon at the foot of Sedgehill Ridge, and then
plunged into a network of lanes which led them, by sweet and mysterious
ways, to the great highway from the Midlands to the coast of the western
sea. On they went, past the little hamlet where the Danes and the Saxons
fought a great fight more than a thousand years ago, and which is still
called by a strange Saxon name, meaning "the burying-place of the
slain"; and the little hamlet smiled in the summer sunshine, as if with
kindly memories of those old warriors whose warfare had been
accomplished so many centuries ago, and who lie together, beneath the
white blossom, in the arms of the great peacemaker called Death, waiting
for the resurrection morning which that blossom is sent to foretell. On,
between man's walls of gray stone, till they came to God's walls of red
sandstone; and then up a steep hill to another common, where the
sweet-scented gorse made a golden pavement, and where there suddenly
burst upon their sight a view so wide and so wonderful that those who
look upon it with the seeing eye and the understanding heart catch
glimpses of the King in His beauty through the fairness of the land that
is very far off. On past the mossy stone, like an overgrown and
illiterate milestone, which marks the boundary between Mershire and
Salopshire; and then through a typical English village, noteworthy
because the rites of Mayday, with May-queen and May-pole to boot, are
still celebrated there exactly as they were celebrated some three
hundred years ago. At last they came to a picturesque wall and gateway,
built of the red stone which belongs to that part of the country, and
which has a trick of growing so much redder at evening-time that it
looks as if the cold stone were blushing with pleasure at being kissed
Good-night by the sun; and then through a wood sloping on the left side
down to a little stream, which was so busy talking to itself about its
own concerns that it had not time to leap and sparkle for the amusement
of passers-by; until they drew up in front of a quaint old castle, built
of the same stone as the outer walls and gateway.

The family were away from home, so the whole of the castle was at the
disposal of Alan and his party, and they had permission to go wherever
they liked. The state-rooms were in front of the building and led out
of each other, so that when all the doors were open any one could see
right from one end of the castle to the other. Dinner was to b