appear that in course of time the plot, or some of it, came to be known as the Quaker's Field, near Llyndu, and tradition said a man was there gibbeted, the field having been gotten as the price of blood. Quite recently the Herberts, Earls of Powys, bought it at a large price, for it adjoined their park, and so ends this most interesting tale, the moral of which is: After all the squabbling in alehouses, "feloniouse murtheringes," and "delightful" cockfightings, the Quakers come best off, for they get the lands and stick to them for nigh two hundred years.

LYMORE-CHIRBURY

W

HEN we were examining the wonderful sundial at Marrington Hall, the squire asked us if we had called at Lymore on our way from Montgomery Castle. We had never heard of the place, though we had seen a large black-and-white house near to the castle-hill. At the Herbert Arms, Chirbury, we were told again that Lymore was by far the best old house in the country, that it was the first place on the left, down the second lane, about three miles off. That sounded well, the first house in three miles, and X fidgeted about time, but time was made for slaves; we must make time, though we had to come back again to Chirbury; so we flew, and were well rewarded.

The greater part of the road we had already gone over; it was as thronged as before with hundreds of young thrushes, and is a beautiful undulating road. I called to X to look out for Offa's Dyke, the big ditch dug by King Offa to divide England from Wales. As he did not clearly hear, I again shouted, "Offa's Dyke." His reply was, "Who's off his bike? I'm not." So I was, nearly.

Down a steep and narrow lane into a stately park we go, where we wind round hills and trees by a pool whereon the swans are gliding with their dusky brood, and quarrelsome coots are chasing the lesser waterhens away. Beyond the farther shore a conical hill, the sharp-cut peak of Corndon, is glistening in the sun,

all faithfully reflected in the dark waters below the great woods.

Here was a decoy for wildfowl, when the hospitality of the Herberts was so profuse that it became a common saying of the country-folk about the wildfowl or the game, that whichever way they flew they would light at Black Hall (that is, Lymore) at last. Amid a herd of grand Herefords, some of which looked like weighing a ton, and by a picturesque saw-mill, where great trunks of trees are piled, we rode up to the hall as if we owned it, and I left X to photograph it while I went to ask permission.

We had been told the house was not inhabited, but a caretaker lived in one of two adjoining cottages. No one was there but a little girl, who said she could take me in the back way, so I went with her and opened the front door for X. We were greatly delighted, roaming and staring about like country gorbies at a fair. There must be acres of oaken flooring and panelling. Not little thin bits, but thick and massive, with a marvellous staircase, where the newel posts are oak trees deeply carved for solid ornaments to stand in high relief. On the first floor this staircase divides, and ascends again past the state bedrooms, reappearing at a little balcony, or minstrels' gallery, which seemed to me just the place for a ghost to look down on the revelry. Our girl guide said, "Oh no, the ghosts don't come there;" she would show us the ghost rooms; so we ran back for the camera. But then she said we could not see the ghosts in the daytime, and some people said they were only bats. yes, she could show me the bats, though they had killed forty a few days before. When I asked if they had used them in a pie, she was disgusted, saying they killed them because they were nasty things that made messes, and they were told to kill them.

Oh

As X talked of a five minutes' exposure to photo

graph the staircase, I went up to the attics, the third floor, to see the bats, and there they were, such funnylooking little creepy creatures. They hang to a beam with one claw and wrap themselves up in their wings and go to sleep. Then if we disturb one, it peeps from under its wing, wriggles round and tries the other side, then pops its head under its bed-clothes again and swings itself to sleep. If again disturbed it mutters and flutters and squeaks about, for it does not love "the garish day." What a happy life, to flit about in the gloaming catching flies, which are a nuisance to everything, flitting o'er those lovely pools and 'mid those shady trees, where the mother bats have their babies clinging to them while they fly. Does the lord of the land, of Powysland, know that forty of them were killed because they made messes and were taken for ghosts? They might have been kept out or banished. I would have found them a home at Didsbury.

All the floors

The oak in this house is wonderful. are waxed and polished, but the panelling, doors, and other oaken work is simply dusted, neither oiled nor waxed, and consequently is a light grey colour, very different from the ordinary conventional idea of oak; the floors are beautifully glossy and dark, very slippery, and therefore rather dangerous-the light oak often shows the graining or medullary rays very beautifully, and some of the panels are of immense breadth. The place is certainly very well kept, fires being made in the winter. Lady Powis and a party had a picnic tea there in the afternoon previous to our visit, and shortly after Lord Kitchener was to shoot the neighbouring coverts. or stubbles. The house has not been inhabited for nearly two hundred years, and yet there is the old furniture, the bandy-legged chairs, the faded tapestry, the dim pictures, even the pewter on the pantry dresser, with the willowpattern plates, which we also carefully pictured.