tory of the Amesbury valley, but she was sensible--as
who must not be?--to its exquisite beauty and the delicacy of the
contrasts between the downs and the richly-foliaged fields through
which the Avon winds. It is a chalk river, clear as a chalk river
always is if unpolluted; the downs are chalk, and though they are
wide-sweeping and treeless, save for clusters of beech here and there
on the heights, the dale with its water, meadows, cattle, and dense
woods, so different from the uplands above them, is in peculiar and
lovely harmony with them.

One day she contrived to reach Stonehenge. She was driven there by the
farmer with whom she was staying, and she asked to be left there while
he went forward. He was to fetch her when he returned. It was a clear
but grey day, and she sat outside the outer circle on the turf looking
northwards over the almost illimitable expanse. She had been told as
much as is known about that mysterious monument,--that it had been
built ages before any record, and that not only were the names of the
builders forgotten, but their purpose in building it was forgotten too.
She was oppressed with a sense of her own, nothingness and the
nothingness of man. If those who raised that temple had so utterly
passed away, for how long would the memory of her existence last?
Stonehenge itself too would pass. The wind and the rain had already
worn perhaps half of it; and the place that now knows it will know it
no more save by vague tradition, which also will be extinguished.

Suddenly, and without any apparent connection with what had gone
before, and indeed in contrast with it, it came into Miriam's mind that
she must do something for her fellow-creatures. How came it there?
Who can tell? Anyhow, there was this idea in the soul of Miriam Tacchi
that morning.

The next question was, What could she do? There was one thing she
could do, and she could not go astray in doing it. Whatever may be
wrong or mistaken, it cannot be wrong or a mistake to wait upon the
sick and ease their misery. She knew, however, that she could not take
up the task without training, and she belonged to no church or
association which could assist her. Perhaps one of the best
recommendations of the Catholic Church was that it held out a hand to
men who, having for some reason or other, learned to hold their lives
lightly, were candidates for the service of humanity--men for whom
death had no terrors--by whom it was ev