hey directed
their steps to an old turfed barrow, with a few gnarled thorn trees,
wind-swept and stunted round it.

"I love this place," said Maud; "it has a nice name, the 'Isle of
Thorns.' I suppose it is a burial-place--some old chief, papa says--and
he is always threatening to have him dug up; but I don't want to
disturb him! He must have had a reason for being buried here, and I
suppose there were people who missed him, and were sorry to lay him
here, and wondered where he had gone. I am sure there is a sad old
story about it; and yet it makes one happy in a curious way to think
about it all."

"Yes," said Howard, "'the old, unhappy, far-off things,' that turn
themselves into songs and stories! That is another puzzle; one's own
sorrows and tragedies, would one like to think of them as being made
into songs for other people to enjoy? I suppose we ought to be glad of
it; but there does not seem anything poetical about them at the time;
and yet they end by being sweeter than the old happy things. The 'Isle
of Thorns'! Yes, that IS a beautiful name."

Suddenly there came a faint musical sound on the air, as sweet as
honey. Howard held up his hand. "What on earth or in heaven is that?"
he said.

"Those are the chimes of Sherborne!" said Maud. "One hears them like
that when the wind is in this quarter. I like to hear them--they have
always been to me a sort of omen of something pleasant about to happen.
Perhaps it is in your honour to-day, to welcome you!"

"Well," said Howard, "they are beautiful enough by themselves; and if
they will bring me greater happiness than I have, I shall not object to
that!"

They smiled at each other, and stood in silence for a little, and then
Maud pointed out some neighbouring villages. "All this," she said, "is
Cousin Anne's--and yours. I think the Isle of Thorns is yours."

"Then the old chief shall not be disturbed," said Howard.

"How curious it is," said Maud, "to see a place of which one knows
every inch laid out like a map beneath one. It seems quite a different
place! As if something beautiful and strange must be happening there,
if only one could see it!"

"Yes," said Howard, "it is odd how we lose the feeling that a place is
romantic when we come to know it. When I first went up to Cambridge,
there were many places there that seemed to me to be so interesting:
walls which seemed to hide gardens full of thickets, strange doorways
by which no one ever passed out or in,