have opened the readiest road to
the southwest, was impeded by sandbanks and rapids; there were as yet no
locks, no canals.

Once the Romans had made matchless roads, as in other parts of their
empire, but not a stone had been laid thereon since the days of Hengist
and Horsa, and many a stone had been taken away for building purposes,
or to pave the courtyards of Saxon homes.[xviii]

Still the ancient Foss Way, which once extended from Lincolnshire to
Devonshire, formed the best route, and it was decided to travel by it,
making a brief detour, so as to enable the party to pass the first night
at the residence of an old friend of the family who dwelt on the high
borderland which separates the counties of Oxford and Warwick, in old
times the frontier between the two Celtic tribes, the Dobuni and the
Carnabii.

So Father Cuthbert and Alfred, with three attendant serfs, left
Aescendune early on a fine summer morning, and followed a byroad through
the forest, until, after a few difficulties, arising from entanglement
in copse or swamp, they reached the Foss Way. Wide and spacious, this
grand old road ran through the dense forest in an almost unbroken line;
huge trees overshadowed it on either side, and the growth of underwood
was so dense that no one could penetrate it without difficulty.
Sometimes the scene changed, and a dense swamp, amidst which the timber
of former generations rotted away, succeeded, but the grand old road
still offered, even in its decay, a firm and sure footing. Built with
consummate skill, the lower strata of which it was composed remained so
firm and unyielding, that, could the Romans but have returned for a few
years, they might have restored it to its ancient perfection, when the
traveller might post rapidly upon it from Lincoln even to Totness in
Devonshire.

Little, however, did our travellers think of the grand men of old who
had built this mighty causeway six or seven centuries earlier. Their
chief feeling, when they reached it, was one of relief; the change was
so acceptable from the tangled and miry bypath through the forest.

"Holy St. Wilfred," exclaimed Father Cuthbert, "but my steed hath
wallowed like a hog. I have sunk in the deep mire where was no footing."

"A little grooming will soon make him clean again, father."

"But verily we have passed through a slough and a wilderness, and my
inner man needeth refreshment; let us even partake of the savoury pies
wherewith the providen