A learned man wrote on one occasion that “an honest walk is better than a skilled physician.  It stimulates heart, brain, and muscles alike, sweeping cobwebs from the mind and heaviness from the heart.”  But this was probably not intended to apply to a man with a sore foot, and it was difficult to understand why the ankle failure had come so suddenly.  We could only attribute it to some defect in the mending of the boot at York, but then came the mystery why the other ankle had not been similarly affected.  The day was beautifully fine, but the surroundings became more smoky as we were passing through a mining and manufacturing district, and it was very provoking that we could not walk through it quickly.  However, we had to make the best of it, imagining we were treading where the saints had trod, or at any rate the Romans, for this was one of their roads to the city of York upon which their legions must have marched; but while we crossed the rivers over bridges, the Romans crossed them by paved fords laid in the bed of the streams, traces of which were still to be seen.

We made a long stay at Comsborough, and saw the scanty remains of the castle, to which Oliver Cromwell had paid special attention, as, in the words of the historian, “he blew the top off,” which had never been replaced.  And yet it had a very long history, for at the beginning of the fourth century it was the Burgh of Conan, Earl of Kent, who with Maximian made an expedition to Armorica (now Brittany), where he was eventually made king, which caused him to forsake his old Burgh in England.  Maximian was a nephew of King Coel, or Cole, the hero of the nursery rhyme, of which there are many versions: 

  Old King Cole was a jolly old soul,
    And a jolly old soul was he;
  He called for his ale, and he called for his beer,
    And he called for his fiddle-diddle-dee.

[Illustration:  CONISBOROUGH CASTLE.]

But he seemed to have been a jolly old sinner as well, for he formed the brilliant idea of supplying his soldiers with British wives, and arranged with his father-in-law, the Duke of Cornwall, to send him several shiploads from the “old country,” for British women were famous for their beauty.  His request was complied with, but a great storm came on, and some of the ships foundered, while others were blown out of their course, as far as Germany, where the women landed amongst savages, and many of them committed suicide rather than pass into slavery.  Who has not heard of St. Ursula and her thousand British virgins, whose bones were said to be enshrined at Cologne Cathedral, until a prying medico reported that many of them were only dogs’ bones—­for which heresy he was expelled the city as a dangerous malignant.