he hovered around her sick bed, and at last, when she was laid away to
rest in the chapel at Edstowe Nunnery, he kept her grave bright with
lights and sweet with flowers. The story of her being poisoned by
Queen Eleanor is a fiction, although it is said the Queen discovered
her place of concealment, and administered to her a severe reproof.

[Illustration: A STUDIOUS MONK.]

The atmosphere of learning dispels superstition, but history clings
fondly to the fine old legends of the past that gather around them
unreal lights and shadows. It is not strange that Oxford, the quiet
valley town, hidden even to the bases of its pinnacles, spires, and
towers in ancient groves, through which glide the waters of the
Thames, should still preserve traditions of the wonder-working gifts
of its early philosophers, whom ignorance associated with the magical
arts and regarded as more than men.

It is related that two old Oxford monks made a head of brass that
spoke.

These wise monks discovered from their wonderful books (the like of
which are not now to be found in any of the twenty colleges) that if
they were able to make a head of brass that could speak, and if they
could _hear_ it speak within a month, they would be given the power to
surround England with a magic wall of brass.

So they studied their folios, and found out the chemistry of making
the wonderful head.

[Illustration: AN OLD TIME STUDENT.]

They listened to hear it three weeks, and then became irresistibly
sleepy. So they intrusted a servant to listen, and to wake them if the
statue should begin to speak.

When they were well asleep, the head said,--

"Time is."

Then it said,--

"Time was."

The servant, not knowing the secret of the monks, failed to awake them
as he had been ordered to do, and down came the figure with a fearful
crash; and England has remained without any other wall of brass than
enters into an Englishman's composition to this day.

CHAPTER XI.

LETTERS AND EXCURSIONS.

An English Skylark.--Letter from George Howe.--Tommy's Account
of his Nottingham Adventure.--Glastonbury Abbey.--The Beginning
of the English Church.--St. Joseph of Arimathaea and the
Glastonbury Thorn.--Story of St. Dunstan and the Devil.

Master Lewis set apart a day at Oxford for leisure, writing, and rest.

In the morning, after breakfast, the Class took a walk to the suburbs,
and rested on some wayside seats overlooking the Thames.

It was