pigeons, and no other aperture whatever but a small arched doorway for entrance. There used to be a cross over this doorway, and an inscription saying it was built by Brother Richard in 1326. There were 606 nests inside, with a circular revolving ladder to get to them. At present it is used as a hen-pen. The live stock

inside, and the fear that I might be accused of robbing a hen-roost, which in country places is generally considered to be one of the lowest sins, deterred me from closely examining it. What a long history for a dovecot, and what millions of pigeons have here been born for men and cats to eat!

Our next point is to find Treago House or Castle, a very ancient fortified dwelling, but it takes a deal of finding, for it is far down in a lonely dell where the lanes are bad, and there is none from whom to ask our way.

The long summer daylight is fading, and the housekeeper strongly objects to our photographing anything. Wearied and worn and famished, for we had cycled fifty miles that day and climbed up many hills, we struggle on for civilisation, good roads, Hereford,

TINTERN ABBEY-GOODRICH CASTLE

I

N our little pilgrimages to old homes we have always sought out those where our predecessors lived and died, and which the destroying hand of man or time has spared. Where crowds of tourists go we shun, but sometimes we err, for "the best-laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley," and tourists swarm where once was peace. With other company each of us had travelled down the Wye from Ross to Chepstow, and now we thought to go by road and quietly see the famous ruin once again.

To cycle up the pass in the dark lone hills to Llanthony had been a veritable pilgrimage, for there no motor car or vulgar tripper shocks the senses; the curlew or the peewit calls, the patient angler, or the still more patient, hopeless, shepherd, calmly waits for death. But at Tintern we meet with fashionable folk, the air resounds with jarring noises, irritating to our ears. Incongruous tourists unconsciously vex other senses, and we feel annoyed that we could not see again Tintern's grey ruin in the peace and quiet of its wondrous beauty.

Even the cycling down that celebrated valley of the Wye from Monmouth grows monotonous, and lacks, for me, the great variety of hopyards or orchards, game-fowl or Herefords, grange, or court, or hall, in which our last few days have quickly sped away. As we enter that majestic ruined nave, the rooks and daws seem parodying the gutturals of the Germans, or the twang of the Yankees. A glance at the visitors' book by the door shows us in ink that is scarcely dry that here are pilgrims