down in lawn and park to a placid pool or mere, which winds away amid gigantic trees on either side, and on the water's farther bank there is a gem of old-world loveliness, a "God's-acre." Girt about with a sunken fence, which the long grass hides until you are on it, is time worn black-and-white chapel, with big gilt weather-cock, shaded and encircled with the immemorial yews-alone in a spacious park. Round about, the white-faced Herefords browse up to the knees in clover. Swans with their dusky cygnets sail about among the water lilies and the golden iris, "floating double, swan and shadow." On swiftly whirring pinions a duck skims over our heads. The angler's joy, the luscious May-flies, are bobbing up and down all over grass and water, where the big fish rise with swirls to suck them under.

Rarest sight of all the living things is that stately bird, the heron. There were many of them majestically stalking about with grand baronial air, or on deeply curved and slowly flapping wings warily wending their flight away from the intruders. I thought of the stir there was in the City News some years ago, when some one, who helped to butcher all the herons, young and old, in a heronry at nesting-time, wrote to the paper to glory in his shame. The herons at Halston looked superb. In Mytton's time there were from fifty to eighty nests, and other water-fowl were abundant, as we know from his pursuit of them amid the ice and snow, by moonlight, and dressed in his night-shirt only.

A famous sanctuary was Halleston or Holystone as Halston was once writ; it may have been "holy" in the days of the mysterious Druids before Christianity was known in the land. The power or the dread of the sanctuary must have been great when it shielded the wild Welsh who had killed the officers of the King of the Lion's heart. Domesday tells us it was inhabited

by two Welshmen and one Frenchman (that is, Norman), but it does not say how long the one Frenchman was left alive by the two Welshmen. For more than three hundred years this vast and wealthy manor was owned by the Knights Hospitallers, for whose hospice tithes and rents were garnered in from other parishes, while their own chapel was exempt (and still is) from episcopal jurisdiction. At the sack of the military and religious orders, these "holy" knights were turned adrift, but even here the oft-quoted curse on the families. of the spoilers seems to have come home to them.

Under the altar in the little chapel lies "Jack Mytton. Round about are hatchments, flags, and tabards, ensigns and mottoes. The crest of the ram's head has probably some connection with the name of Mutton. The mottoes are "Mors iter vitæ" (Death is the way of life), and "In cœlo quies" (In heaven is rest, or, It's quiet in heaven), as if it could be heaven to be quiet for one who never would be quiet, whose pleasure was in excitement, whose joy was in the frolics of a monkey and the restlessness of a hyena. "The wild squire" may be quiet now, but Halston may be sold, and if some prosperous shopkeeper bought it, he would buy Jack Mytton's body as part of the freehold, planted there and his by the law of the land The new parson would probably say the old church was damp, or draughty, or dark, and a churchwarden-builder would propose some cheap alterations just to restore it a bit, and that would be the time to have a look at "Jack" and see if any keepsakes or valuables had been buried with him. Let us hope for the best and be thankful we can record pictures of this fair scene ere the evil days come again.

The water winds amid the woods, where in misty haze the grey and ghostly herons glide as phantoms of the days when their young lord climbed trees which no one else could climb that he might have some heron pie. Above us and around the air resounds with the grand

PARADISE

chorus of the choir invisible.

69

Unseen larks are showering down their careless rapture" from the skies. Every bush and tree is lively with its happy warblers, the hawthorn's scent is mingled with the perfumes of fields of flowers. The golden light of June bathes in its glow all the rich luxuriance of an English park, where everything that hath breath exults in the joy of living in the spring-tide-basking in Paradise.

THE WORLD'S END

T

HIS pilgrimage was to the World's End, up in the mountains of Wales; and if any Englishman heard a Welshman say Plas Uchaf Eglwyseg he would think the end of the world or of some

body was imminent. In English it is named the end of the world, for so it proved itself to be to many who had gone up there, and either stepped over the edge of the world into empty space or been eaten by the Welsh, for few returned again. X had been ferreting out more ancestors, and found that one of his roots took him to a Welsh princess, who had been stolen from her husband and hidden in the mountains, a place we ought to find. I felt quite frightened at the prospect, for the Welsh have such fearful pedigrees and language, but we determined to go on pilgrimage, though we might have to sleep out all night or be lost in the wilderness of the hills.

The nice little romance attached to the place is somewhat as follows. When it was customary for the Princesses of Wales to be sent to London to be taken care of and educated in polite society, the King of England honoured them by becoming father of their children and then marrying them to some of his men, who, with the children, were made nobles, this being the teaching of manners and the elementary education of the times. King Henry the First behaved in this right royal fashion to the Princess Nesta, who was one of the millions of women the most beautiful who ever lived. When she had settled down for a second family with her new Lord, Gerald Earl of Pembroke and its stately castle, a hot-headed son of Cadogan, the Prince of South