ew
wild; where gulls spread silver wings and trailed coral feet a few yards
above our heads; and the tang of the sea mingled with pine-balsam in our
nostrils.

Soon after dull, but historic Wareham we came quite into the heart of
Thomas Hardy's country. Scarcely had we turned our backs on Wareham
(which I wasn't sorry to do), when I cried out at something on a distant
height--something which was like a background in a mediaeval picture. It
was Corfe Castle, of which I'd been thinking ever since Amesbury,
because of the wicked Elfrida; but the glimpse was delusive, for the
dark shape hid in a moment, and we didn't see it again for a long
time--not until our curving road ran along underneath the castle's
towering hill. Then it soared up with imposing effect, giving an
impression of grisly strength which was heightened the nearer we
approached. Distance lends no enchantment to Corfe, for the castle
dominates the dour, gray town that huddles round it, and is never nobler
than when you tap for admittance at its gates.

I tried to think, as we waited to go in, how young Edward felt--Edward
the Martyr--when he stood at the gates, waiting to go in and visit his
half-brother whom he loved, and his step-mother Elfrida, whom he hated.
He never left the castle alive, poor boy! Afterward, in the ruins, I
went to the window where Elfrida was supposed to have watched the young
king's coming, before she ran down to the gates and directed the murder
which was planned to give her own son the kingdom. It made the story
seem almost too realistic, because, as you often tell me, my imagination
carries me too fast and too far. There's nothing easier than to send it
back ten or twelve centuries in the same number of minutes--and it's
such a cheap way of travelling, too!

Corfe is in Dorset, you must know, a county as different from others as
I am different from the real Ellaline Lethbridge, and the castle is at
the very centre of the Isle of Purbeck, which makes it seem even more
romantic than it would otherwise. I'm afraid it wasn't really even begun
in the days of Elfrida, or "AElfrith," who had only a hunting lodge
there; but if people _will_ point out her window, am I to blame if I try
to make firm belief attract shy facts? Besides, facts are such dull dogs
in the historical kennels until they've been taught a few tricks.

Anyhow, Corfe is Norman, at worst, and not only did King John keep much
treasure there, but one supposes there's s