ome by accident on a once sacred spot.

"Why this," said I, as we paused at the edge of the wood, "this is the
ruin of some ancient church, or perhaps of a religious house! Look at
the niche there above the arch of the door--there's been an image in
that--and at the general run of the stone lying about. Certainly this
is an old church! Why have we never heard of it?"

"Utterly forgotten, I should think," said Miss Raven. "It must be a
long time since there were people about here to come to it."

"Probably a village down on the coast--now swept away," I remarked.
"But we must look this place out in the local books. Meanwhile let's
explore it."

We began to look about the clearing. The tower was almost gone as to
three sides of it; the fourth was fairly intact. A line of fallen
masonry lay to the north and was continued a little on the east, where
it rose into a higher, ivy-covered mass. Within this again was
another, less obvious line, similar in plan, and also covered with
unchecked growth: within that the uneven surface of the ground was
thickly encumbered with rank weeds, beds of thistle, beds of nettle,
and a plenitude of bramble and gorse; in one place towards the eastern
mass of overgrown wall, a great clump of gorse had grown to such a
height and thickness as to form an impenetrable screen. And, peering
and prying about, suddenly we came, between this screen and the foot
of the tower on signs of great slabs of stone, over the edges of which
the coarse grass had grown, and whose surfaces were thickly
encumbered with moss and lichen.

"Gravestones!" said Miss Raven. "But--I suppose they're quite worn and
illegible."

I got down on my knees at one of the slabs less encumbered than the
others and began to tear away the grass and weed. There was a rich,
thick carpet of moss on it, and a fringe of grey, clinging lichen, but
by the aid of a stout pocket-knife I forced it away, and laid bare a
considerable surface of the upper half of the stone. And now that the
moss, which had formed a sort of protecting cover, was removed, we saw
lettering, worn and smoothed at its edges in common with the rest of
the slab, but still to be made out with a little patience.

There may be--probably is--a certain density in me, a slowness of
intuition and perception, but it is the fact that at this time and for
some minutes later, I had not the faintest suspicion that we had
accidentally lighted upon something connected with the mys