had lost her balance and fallen in, and
although the water was but three feet deep she had in her feebleness
been unable to save herself. She was lying on her back on the clearly
seen bed of many-coloured pebbles, her head pointing downstream, and the
swift fretting current had carried away her hood and pulled out her long
abundant silver-white hair, and the current played with her hair, now
pulling it straight out, then spreading it wide over the surface, mixing
its silvery threads with the hair-like green blades of the floating
water-grass. And the dead face was like marble; but the wide-open eyes
that had never wholly lost their brilliance and the beautiful lungwort
blue colour were like living eyes--living and gazing through the
crystal-clear running water at the group of nuns staring down with
horror-struck faces at her.

Thus ended Elfrida's darkened life; nor did it seem an unfit end; for it
was as if she had fallen into the arms of the maiden who had in her
thoughts become one with the stream--the saintly Editha through whose
sacrifice and intercession she had been saved from death everlasting.

AN OLD THORN

[Illustration: HAWTHORN AND IVY NEAR THE GREAT RIDGE WOOD.]

I

The little village of Ingden lies in a hollow of the South Wiltshire
Downs, the most isolated of the villages in that lonely district. Its
one short street is crossed at right angles in the middle part by the
Salisbury road, and standing just at that point, the church on one hand,
the old inn on the other, you can follow it with the eye for a distance
of nearly three miles. First it goes winding up the low down under which
the village stands, then vanishes over the brow to reappear again a mile
and a half further away as a white band on the vast green slope of the
succeeding down, which rises to a height of over 600 feet. On the summit
it vanishes once more, but those who use it know it for a laborious road
crossing several high ridges before dropping down into the valley road
leading to Salisbury.

When, standing in the village street, your eye travels up that white
band, you can distinctly make out even at that distance a small,
solitary tree standing near the summit--an old thorn with an ivy growing
on it. My walks were often that way, and invariably on coming to that
point I would turn twenty yards aside from the road to spend half an
hour seated on the turf near or under the old tree. These half-hours
were always gra