behind a rampart of hampers, drowned their sorrows and laid their dust
in lemonade, and recruited their minds and bodies with oysters and cold
beef, and rolls and jam tarts, till the profession of a naturalist
seemed to them to be one of the most glorious in all this glorious
world.

"Now," said Mr Roe, who was president of the club and host, "let us go
and see the abbey. I have put together a few notes on its history and
architecture, which I thought might be useful. Let us go first to the
Saxon crypt, which is unquestionably the oldest portion of the
structure."

"Oh, lag all that," said Dig to his friend. "Are you going to hear all
that rot?"

"Not if I know it," replied Arthur. "We'd better lie low, and help wash
up the plates, and when they're gone we can go for a spin up the big
window."

So, when Mr Roe, having collected his little audience round him, began
to descant with glowing countenance on the preciousness of some
fragments of a reputed Druidical font lately dug up in the crypt, two
naturalists, who should have been hanging on his lips, were busy
polishing up the plates and the remnants of the repast, at the water's
edge, and watching their chance for a "spin" up the ruined arch of the
great window. That window in its day must have been one of the finest
abbey windows in England. It still stood erect, covered with ivy, while
all around it walls, towers, and roof had crumbled into dust. Some of
the slender stone framework still dropped gracefully from the Gothic
arch, and at the apex of all there still adhered a foot or two of the
sturdy masonry of the old belfry.

No boy could look up to that lofty platform, standing out clear against
the grey sky, without feeling his feet tingle. Certainly Arthur and Dig
were not proof against its fascination.

The first part of the climb, up the tumbled walls and along the ivy-
covered buttresses, was easy enough. The few sparrows and swallows
bustling out from the ivy at their approach had often been similarly
disturbed before. But when they reached the point where the great arch,
freeing itself, as it were, of its old supports, sprung in one clear
sweep skyward, their difficulties began. The treacherous stones more
than once crumbled under their feet, and had it not been for the
sustaining ivy, they would have come down with a run too.

"You see," said Mr Roe to his admiring audience below, "the work of
dissolution is still rapidly going on. These