rification--that destiny,
dreadful, ineluctable, that made her soul faint to think of it. Here, on
this earth, it was for her to toil, a slave with heavy irons on her
feet, in her master's fields and pleasure-grounds, and these gowned men
with shaven heads, wearing ropes of beads and crucifixes as emblems of
their authority--these were the taskmasters set over her, and to these,
she, Elfrida, one time queen in England, would bend in submission and
humbly confess her sins, and uncomplainingly take whatever austerities
or other punishments they decreed.

Here, then, at Amesbury itself, she began her works of expiation, and
found that she, too, like the unhappy man in the parable, could
experience some relief and satisfaction in her solitary embittered
existence in the work itself.

Having been told that at this village where she was living a monastery
had existed and had been destroyed in the dreadful wars of two to three
centuries ago, she conceived the idea of founding a new one, a nunnery,
and endowing it richly, and accordingly the Abbey of Amesbury was built
and generously endowed by her.

This religious house became famous in after days, and was resorted to by
the noblest ladies in the land who desired to take the veil, including
princesses and widow queens; and it continued to flourish for centuries,
down to the Dissolution.

This work completed, she returned, after nineteen years, to her old home
at Wherwell. Since she had lost sight of her maid Editha, she had been
possessed with a desire to re-visit that spot, where she had been happy
as a young bride and had repined in solitude and had had her glorious
triumph and stained her soul with crime. She craved for it again,
especially to look once more at the crystal current of the Test in which
she had been accustomed to dip her hands. The grave, saintly face of
Editha had reminded her of that stream; and Editha she might not see.
She could not seek for her, nor speak to her, nor cry to her to come
back to her, since she had said that they would meet no more on earth.

Having become possessed of the castle which she had once regarded as her
prison and cage, she ordered its demolition and used the materials in
building the abbey she founded at that spot, and it was taken for
granted by the Church that this was done in expiation of the part she
had taken in Athelwold's murder. At this spot where the stream became
associated in her mind with the thought of Editha,