tenants, for the place has a weird, lost look. Begirt about as it is by quaking bog, it may some day go down quick into the pit, leaving only corpse-lights to flicker o'er the moss where once had been a human home.

We venture on again in the direction of Alderley Edge, along a most uncanny path, shoving our bikes through moss and mire and heather, with pitfalls of black slush to engulf us at any false step. The corncrakes hoarsely croak and the peewits would lure us astray, but we plod carefully on until the path enters a field and becomes a cart-track; then we emerge into a lane which is a foot deep in sand; but it also improves, and we keep Alderley Edge as a beacon until we stand on it, where there is a well-known inn called the Wizard. From there we take the road to Macclesfield, which is not a very savoury town. The way beyond it, over the moors towards Leek, is not enticing, but the fresh air on the hills is bracing, and pilgrims must be content with their lot.

MONTGOMERY CASTLE-MARRINGTON

HALL

I

T had long been our intention to make a pilgrimage to Montgomery Castle, for Roger de Montgomery, who built it, is the only one of X's numerous an

cestors whose name has survived him in castle, town, and county. Unfortunately no one could tell us anything about the town or the county of Montgomery, and they are not marked on the map of England. As most people flatly contradict this statement, and others say they are in Scotland, it may be as well to say they are really somewhere in Wales. We might have doubted if there were such places if we had not already made a pilgrimage to the tomb of the great Norman in Shrewsbury Abbey, where we were rather disappointed with his effigy, for since it has lost its head and hands and feet there is little chance of seeing any family likeness there might be in any of his descendants.

When William the Conqueror parcelled out the lands of the Saxons among his followers, and also gave them all they could get off the Welsh, his kinsman Roger got 157 manors, and grabbed more from his neighbours on the borderland, to which he gave his own name; and it shows the capability of the man and his master if we consider that for centuries after their time no Saxon or Norman was ever safe in the fair land of Montgomery.

Roger built his nest like an eagle builds its eyry-on a precipitous crag, from whence he could behold afar.

As soon as he was safely buried the Welsh sacked and burnt the castle and killed every one in it. The