ARCH OF WOLVES' HEADS

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of their fathers, and built an opposition shop after the old one had been wrested away or reformed. If the woman had known a little more she had no need to be so scared of even looking at the house of the heretics. Swynnerton old church is very interesting. There is

a round-headed western door, with wolves' heads all round the arch, but the photograph does not show them well, the light not being good enough for time-worn stone. They may be seen on the middle circular arch, each wolf's head having two sharp ears pointing up and a sharp nose pointing down. A colossal figure of Christ, which was dug up from below the floor of the Chapel of

our Ladye, came out well, but the gem of the place, the crusader, founder of the church, whom X claims for an ancestor through Maud Swynnerton of the blood-royal, is nearly worn away. A cross-legged effigy in mail armour, grasping his long and heavy sword, with convex yardlong shield, six feet two in length, the same as the bones below, for they were lately measured again, and the red

dish brown hair and perfect teeth noted (for there were no dentists at the time of the first Crusade), believed to be of the first lord of Swynnerton, of whom another has written, "The one faithful sentry clad in full panoply lies in his dim recess with his feet to the east, his eyes fixed upon the altar as if waiting in stony patience for the day which may yet dawn, when the Host shall again be elevated in the sanctuary, and when the Masses of the Requiem for which he endowed with broad lands the church of his own building, shall once more startle his dull, cold ears with the witchery of a sound once

familiar, now well-nigh forgotten. It is a sad and pathetic thought that the grim old statue of him who built and endowed the church and struck many a hard blow for altar and home, should be merely an object of wonder in the spot where he lived and died. The descendants of his own hardy followers can only say, 'That is some old Crusader.'"

DERBYSHIRE

T

HIS pilgrimage was in very different country from that in which we usually roam. We did

not this time find a land with milk and honey flowing, but a stone-wall country with stunted wind-swept trees, bleak, barren, and bare; where a sparse population of withered folk who have been reared on oatcake and mutton or barley bread and bacon, have one long struggle with thin winds and hard fare from the cradle to the grave, until they become so thrifty and dour that, as the natives say, they die standing up. In our usual haunts there are blackberries and nuts on every hedge, apples and plums at times, mushrooms and bilberries for the gathering, always a promise of plenty, with cattle fat and well-liking, dosome and kindly. But in Derbyshire, if you see a few skinny sheep or a poor calf that looks "welly clemmed," they plaintively bleat at you as if they wanted something to eat. Even the bundles of black feathers known as rooks, crows, or daws, seem lightly wafted about by the fitful winds, as if they had never known the delicacies of stubble fields or turnips, and had great difficulty in keeping body and soul together.

Into this hard stony country went X and I to look after more ancestral homes, not that I wanted any ancestors from that district, for I should expect them to be uncommonly close-fisted and cross-tempered if they had ever gathered much together on those barren hills. But X said the air was beautiful, it was like champagne— which he never tastes-and on the distaff side, as the

heralds say, his children would have ancestors other than his, and therefore it was meet that we should see what manner of homes they had, and begin with the halls of Hartington and Beresford.

It was well known to me that Hartington used to be ten miles from everywhere, and more than that from some places. Buxton, Matlock, Ashbourne, Leek are on different sides, each

being about ten miles away. But now there is a railway, and we made use of it, not knowing whither we might wander after. Hartington station is like the other places; it has kept miles away from the town, being up on the hills in a desert, but after one or two awkward corners there is a fair road in a beautiful valley, down which the cyclist may roll into the town. is a nice, open, cleanlooking little town, with broad streets, and an ancient cruciform church aloft on a steep hill in the centre. The porch is huge and "as wide as a church door, with a niche for the patron saint above the entrance, and on the wall by it a large sun-dial, whose motto was, "So marches the God of day." There are many incised slabs and curiosities, the several pillars in the nave being of unequal heights. The steepness of the path and steps seems to me to be prohibitory to old folks attending the church, but perhaps there are no stout ones here; chill penury would starve them to

It

HARTINGTON CHURCH