natural as life. They was mostly bishops, and had been
lying there for centuries. While looking at these I came to a tomb
with an opening low down on the side of it, and behind some iron bars
there lay a stone figure that made me fairly jump. He was on his back
with hardly any clothes on, and was actually nothing but skin and
bones. His mouth was open, as if he was gasping for his last breath. I
never saw such an awful sight, and as I looked at the thing my blood
began to run cold, and then it froze. The freezing was because I
suddenly thought to myself that this might be a Dorkminster, and that
that horrible object was my ancestor. I was actually afraid to look at
the inscription on the tombstone for fear that this was so, for if it
was, I knew that whenever I should think of my family tree this bag of
bones would be climbing up the trunk, or sitting on one of the
branches. But I must know the truth, and trembling so that I could
scarcely read, I stooped down to look at the inscription and find out
who that dreadful figure had been. It was not a Dorkminster, and my
spirits rose.

[Illustration: "This might be a Dorkminster"]

We got here three days ago, and we have made a visit to the Isle of
Wight. We went straight down to the southern coast, and stopped all
night at the little town of Bonchurch. It was very lovely down there
with roses and other flowers blooming out-of-doors as if it was summer,
although it is now getting so cold everywhere else. But what pleased me
most was to stand at the top of a little hill, and look out over the
waters of the English Channel, and feel that not far out of eyeshot was
the beautiful land of France with its lower part actually touching
Italy.

You know, madam, that when we was here before, we was in France, and a
happy woman was I to be there, although so much younger than now I
couldn't properly enjoy it; but even then France was only part of the
road to Italy, which, alas, we never got to. Some day, however, I shall
float in a gondola and walk amid the ruins of ancient Rome, and if Jone
is too sick of travel to go with me, it may be necessary for Corinne to
see the world, and I shall take her.

Now I must finish this letter and bid good-by to beautiful Britain,
which has made us happy and treated us well in spite of some
comparisons in which we was expected to be on the wrong side, but which
hurt nobody, and which I don't want even to think of at such a moment
as this.