ic window above, framed richly _en coquille_, and decorated
with arabesques.

Behind these houses is what remains of the ancient Church of St.
Walburga, half buried in the thick verdure of the garden. After
considerable difficulty we gained admittance to the ruin, because it is
not considered safe to walk beneath its walls. Even in its ruin it was
most imposing and majestic. We would have tarried here, but the
_custode_ was very nervous and hurried us through the thickets of bushes
growing up between the stones of the pavement, and fairly pushed us out
again into the small parkway, accepting the very generous fee which I
gave him with what I should call surliness. But we ignored this
completely, after the manner of old travelers, which we had been advised
to adopt.

At one side were stored some rather dilapidated and dirty wax figures
which reclined in various postures, somewhat too lifelike in the gloom
of the chamber, and entirely ludicrous, so much so that it was with much
difficulty that we controlled our smiles. The roving eye of the surly
_custode_, however, warned us against levity of any sort. These wax
figures, he explained, gruffly enough, were those of the most sacred
religious personages, and the attendant saints and martyrs, used in the
great procession and ceremony of the "Sodalite," which is a sort of
Passion Play, shown during the last Sunday in July of each year in the
streets of the town. The story relates an adventure of a Count of
Flanders, who brought to Furnes, during the first years of the Holy
Crusades, a fragment of the True Cross. Assailed by a tempest in the
Channel off the coast, he vowed the precious object to the first church
he came to, if his prayers for succor were answered. "Immediately the
storm abated, and the Count, bearing the fragment of the Cross aloft,
was miraculously transported over the waves to dry land."

This land proved to be the sand dunes of Flanders, and the church tower
was that of St. Walburga. After a conference with his followers, who
also were saved, he founded the solemn annual procession in honor of the
True Cross, in which was also introduced the representation of the
"Mysteries of the Passion."[2]

This procession was suppressed during the religious troubles of the
Reform, but afterwards was revived by the church authorities, and now
all of the episodes of the life of Christ pass yearly through the great
Grand' Place--the stable in Bethlehem; the flight int