at Westhope, of course, if
you are a Middleshire man; for Westhope is on the verge of Middleshire,
and the train does not go any farther--at least, it only goes into one
of the insignificant counties which jostle each other to hold on to
Middleshire, unknown Saharas, where passengers who oversleep themselves
wake to find themselves cast away.

Westhope Abbey stands in its long, low meadows and level gardens, close
to the little town, straggling red roof above red roof, up its steep
cobbled streets.

Down the great central aisle you may walk on mossy stones between the
high shafts of broken pillars under the sky. God's stars look down once
more where the piety of man had for a time shut them out. Through the
slender tracery of what was once the east window, instead of glazed
saint and crucifix, you may see the little town clasping its hill.

The purple clematis and the small lizard-like leaf of the ivy have laid
tender hands on all that is left of that stately house of prayer. The
pigeons wheel round it, and nest in its niches. The soft, contented
murmur of bird praise has replaced the noise of bitter human prayer. A
thin wind-whipped grass holds the summit of the broken walls against all
corners. The fallen stones, quaintly carved with angel and griffin, are
going slowly back year by year, helped by the rain and hindered by the
frost, slowly back through the sod to the generations of human hands
that held and hewed them, and fell to dust below them hundreds of years
ago. The spirit returns to the God who gave it, and the stone to the
hand that fashioned it.

The adjoining monastery had been turned into a dwelling-house, without
altering it externally, and it was here that Lord Newhaven loved to pass
the summer months. Into its one long upper passage all the many rooms
opened, up white stone steps through arched doors, rooms which had once
been monks' dormitories, abbots' cells, where Lady Newhaven and her
guests now crimped their hair and slept under down quilts till noon.

It was this long passage, with its interminable row of low latticed
windows, that Lord Newhaven was turning into a depository for the old
English weapons which he was slowly collecting. He was standing now
gazing lovingly at them, drawing one finger slowly along an inlaid
arquebus, when a yell from the garden made him turn and look out.

It was not a yell of anguish, and Lord Newhaven remained at the window
leaning on his elbows and watching at