it is, for it was founded by a band of Flemish people, who fled
from persecution. The huge old city walls and quaint gates put me in
mind of a glorified Boulogne, or a bit of old Dinan, under the castle.
And the way the town lies, with its beautiful harbour far below, its
gray rocks and broken walls by the sea, in golden sands, is like
Turner's ideas of historic French fortresses. The Benedictine monks,
too, who come across the gleaming stretch of water from Caldy Island in
a green-and-red steam yacht, add one more foreign note. And I'm
delighted to tell you that the hotel where we stayed is built upon the
city wall of which nobody seems to know the date--not even the
guide-books. The people we asked rather apologized for having to confess
that probably it was no earlier than the twelfth century; for the
twelfth century is considered crudely modern for Welsh things.

In front of my bedroom window an old lookout tower, darkly veined with
ivy, stood up from the vast foundation of the stone wall; and at night I
could gaze down, down, over what seemed in the moon-mist to be a mile of
depth, to an almost tropical garden laid out on the wall itself. When
the tide comes in and drowns the gold of the sands, the sea breaks
against the buttress of rock and stone, and the hotel seems all
surrounded with the wash and foam of waters, like a fortified castle of
long-ago.

We ought to have stopped more than one night and part of a next day, but
there is so much, so much to do; and, as I told you, Sir Lionel's
thoughts are already marching on toward home. There are all the beauty
spots of Wales before us; and the Lake Country, and the North by the
Roman Wall, before we turn south again for Graylees. I say "we"--but you
know what I mean.

The run we had to-day, coming through Cardigan to Aberystwith, has begun
to show me what Wales can do in the way of beauty when she really puts
her soul to it; but Sir Lionel says it is nothing to what we shall see
to-morrow. What joy that I have still a to-morrow--and a day after
to-morrow--empty of Dick! Do you suppose a condemned person finds his
last sip of life the sweetest in the cup? I can imagine it might be so.

You'll be glad to get this, I'm sure, dearest, so I'll send it at once,
with loads and loads of love from,

Your Criminal Child.

P. S. I forgot to tell you that Aberystwith isn't nearly as beautiful as
Tenby, but it has a castle towering over the sea, built by no one less
than