emarkable being the huge dragon with a long curly tail in the act
of swallowing St. Margaret, whose skirts and feet are shown inside the
capacious jaws, while the head is beginning to appear somewhere behind
the dragon's neck. To the right is shown a gruesome representation of
the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, and then follow Adam and Eve by the Tree
of Life (a twisted piece of foliage), the martyrdom of St. Andrew, and
what seems to be another dragon.

On each side of the bridle-road by the church you can trace without the
least difficulty the ground-plan of many houses under the short turf.
The early writers do not mention Cottam, and so far I have come upon no
explanation for the wiping out of this village. Possibly its extinction
was due to the Black Death in 1349.

It is about four miles by road to Cowlam, although the two churches are
only about a mile and a half apart; and when Cowlam is reached there is
not much more in the way of a village than at Cottam. The only way to
the church from the road is through an enormous stackyard, speaking
eloquently of the large crops produced on the farm. As in the other
instance, a search has to be made for the key, entailing much
perambulation of the farm.

At length the door is opened, and the splendid font at once arrests the
eye. More noticeable than anything else in the series of carvings are
the figures of two men wrestling, similar to those on the font from the
village of Hutton Cranswick, now preserved in York Museum. The two
figures are shown bending forwards, each with his hands clasped round
the waist of the other, and each with a foot thrown forward to trip the
other, after the manner of the Westmorland wrestlers to be seen at the
Grasmere sports. It seems to me scarcely possible to doubt that the
subject represented is Jacob wrestling with the _man_ at Penuel.

At Sledmere, the adjoining village, everything has a well-cared-for and
reposeful aspect. Its position in a shallow depression has made it
possible for trees to grow, so that we find the road overhung by a
green canopy in remarkable contrast to the usual bleakness of the
Wolds. The park surrounding Sir Tatton Sykes' house is well wooded,
owing to much planting on what were bare slopes not very many years
ago.

The village well is dignified with a domed roof raised on tall columns,
put up about seventy years ago by the previous Sir Tatton to the memory
of his father, Sir Christopher Sykes; the inscription