The guide hesitated no longer, and struck into a bypath, which penetrated the depth of the woody marsh through which the Foss Way then had its course.  After a minute or two it became evident, from the footing, that they were upon the paved work of a causeway overgrown with weeds and rank herbage; huge mounds showed where fortifications had once existed, and shortly, broken pillars and ruined walls appeared at irregular intervals.

They had little time to look around them, for the storm had come rapidly up, and the glare of the lightning was incessant, while the rain poured down in absolute torrents.  Before them rose a huge ruin covered with ivy and with the roof partly protecting the interior.  It was so large that they were able to lead their horses within its protection and wait the cessation of the rain.

Between the flashes the sky was intensely dark, but they were almost incessant, and revealed the city of the dead in which they had found refuge.  It was an ancient Welsh town, and in the latter years of the deadly struggle with the English, had been taken after a protracted resistance.  Tradition had not even preserved its name, and only stated that every living soul had perished in the massacre when the outer walls were at length stormed and the town given to fire and sword.  The victors, as was frequently the case, had avoided the spot, preferring to build elsewhere, and, like Silchester or Anderida, it had fallen into desolation such as befell mighty Babylon.

And now the ignorant rustic peopled its buildings with the imaginary forms of doleful creatures, and shunned the fatal precincts where once family love and social affections had flourished; where hearts, long mouldered to dust, had beaten with tender affection, where all the little circumstances which make up life—­the trivial round, the common task—­had gone on beneath the summer’s sun or winter’s storm, till the great convulsion which ended the existence of the whole community.

Dunstan noticed that his whole party crowded closely together, and when the lightning illuminated each face saw that fear had left its visible mark.

The continuous roar of thunder, the hissing of the descending rain, the wind which blew in angry gusts, prevented all conversation until nearly an hour had elapsed, when the strife began to diminish.  It was a sad and mournful sight to gaze upon the remains of departed greatness when thus illuminated by the electric flash, and easily might the fancy, deceived by the transient glimpses of things, people the ruins with the shades of their departed inhabitants.

“Father,” said Alfred, at length, “who were they who lived here?  Do you know aught about them?”

“The men whom our ancestors subdued—­the Welsh, or British—­an unhappy race.”

“Were they heathen?”

“At one time, but they were converted by the missions from Rome and the East, of which the earliest was that of St. Joseph of Arimathea to our own Glastonbury; he may have preached to the very people who lived here, nay, in this very basilica, which, I think, may have been converted into a church.”