give it a handful of beans for once in its life, but perhaps they would bring on intoxication or a fit.

One

We are told there is not an inn in the village; but we see some hens, and as we are wondering whether we can get raw eggs and eat them by the well for tea, we find a house where they will fit us up. While they are making ready we inspect the church. It is on rising ground, sheltered by noble trees of great age. looks as if the daws had built in its hollow trunk and piled up platforms of sticks for centuries. The church is in great part actually Norman. The very solid tower has no stairway. The round-headed doorway has old sculpture, little figures with arms akimbo, and hieroglyphics that we cannot translate. There is a curious old font, and there are gorgeous and elaborate monuments of the Fitzherberts, another branch of the Swynnerton family. The little church is very dark, but the Norman arches and other relics are good, and it is open and clean.

In our tea-room is a musical instrument, on which X begins to play, and I caution him that if he goes on like that he will turn the milk sour. He says it is only a sonata or symphony, or something or other, very charming, and cannot hurt anything. I take his tune to be something in the psalm-singing line. and feel sure it will turn the milk or cream sour. Tea does not come in for a few minutes, and then he finds for himself that the milk really is beginning to curdle, and he will not have any. So I drink it up before it has time to go We have then to consider our next move, and how to get home. Dovedale is now out of the question, and I suggest we go to Ashbourne, where there is a fine church, with possibilities of lots of ancestors, almshouses, and a grammar-school, with a most beautifully illuminated charter of the time of Elizabeth. He agrees to go to Ashbourne. The first part of our way was under a fine avenue of old trees in the park of the hall, and

worse.

then along a good road mostly downhill, and with fair scenery. At Ashbourne station we find that trains go to Stockport and Manchester in opposite directions, and that two companies generally start a train about the same time, each trying which can be longest on the way -a most wearisome journey. Cycling might have been as fast, and far pleasanter, if there had been a good road. This was our first pilgrimage into Derbyshire, and our second, after a year's interval, was no better, and so far we have not been there again.

DICK WHITTINGTON'S PROBABLE

BIRTHPLACE

NY one who is fond of cats, or Lord Mayors or success in life, the marrying of a beautiful girl

A

with lots of money, the making of a fortune and immortal fame, is probably interested in Dick Whittington, and would like to learn from whence he came. Several counties claim the honour of his birth. A parson has written a book about him, full of assertions without proofs, fit for those who have plenty of faith, but not for those who wish to get at the facts, and a knight has enlarged upon it. Let me tell the tale in its oldest form, and then judge what is likely.

Once upon a time, in London's famous city, where the streets were paved with gold (it is now about five hundred and fifty years ago), there was a certain rich merchant known as Hugh Fitz Warren, who found a poor lad starving on his doorstep. He took him in in charity, and told his cook to give him food and find him work. The lad was an orphan, a stranger in the city, and the cook bullied him. An old pamphlet has preserved his first order: "Clean the spit and drippingpan, make the fire and wind the jack, or I'll break your head with the ladle and make you a football.” He was the scullion, servant of servants, but his master's daughter. Mistress Alice, asked him about his kindred and gave him old clothes.

A merchant who stayed all night gave him a penny for cleaning his shoes. With this, his first money, he bought a cat, for the garret in which he slept was

It

swarming with rats. The tale of the buying of the cat sounds true. A woman who had a good mouser offered it to him for sixpence, and he bought it for a penny. is like a woman to ask sixpence for what was worth a penny, and not unlike a merchant prince to buy for a penny what may have been worth sixpence. The cat proved to be a great success, and it is very probable that through a cat Dick won his young mistress's favour and his first rise to fortune. Still he was unhappy. The cook would neither quit nor die, and as all the world knows Dick ran away early on All Hallows' Day. But the immortal chimes recalled him. Who does not know what was said by the bells of Bow?

"Turn again, Whit-ting-ton

Thrice Lord Mayor of Lon-don!"

He did turn again. His master was venturing a ship, as a merchant's foreign business was then called, and all his servants (as the custom also was) had to venture something with him. This insured their prayers and good wishes. gave them a share in the business, and was co-operation centuries before co-operation was heard of. Dick was told he would have to venture something, but he fell on his knees, and begged them not to jeer at him, for he had nought but a cat. "Just the thing we "it will keep down

want," said the captain of the ship; the rats." So Dick ventured his all, which was rather speculative, and the mice at the merchant's house breathed freely again.

The ship got wrecked, and the cat was taken to the Sultan of Gingerbeer, which was somewhere in Barbary, where she was worth her weight in gold in ridding the palace of the rats, and the Sultan sent Dick a casket of jewels for her. When the old merchant saw those jewels, and who they were for, according to the Bill of Lading, he nudged Alice, and said, "Alice, my lass, thou must have these jewels by hook or by crook. Dick's a good lad and steady; he would take care of thee when I