an ox whole, and had a poker five feet long; stone cannon-balls were piled up on the floor, and on the walls hung a medieval armory of helmets, gorgelets, breast-plates, coats of mail, shields and swords, daggers and lances.  A special feature of the museum was a wax-work figure of a knight clad in full armor which gave an excellent idea of what Sir Bevis of Wickborough must have looked like somewhere about the year 1217.  Another figure, dressed in rich velvet and fur, with flowered silk kirtle, represented his wife Dame Philippa, in the act of offering him a silver goblet of wine, while a hound stood with its head pressed to her hand.  The group was so natural that it was almost startling, and took the spectator back as nothing else could have done to the ancient medieval days which it pictured.  A small stair in the corner of the tower led down to a dungeon, where, lying among the straw, was an equally impressive wax-work figure of a prisoner, wretched, unkempt, and bound hand and foot with chains.  A pitcher of water lay by his side, and a stuffed rat peering from the straw added a further touch of realism.  Winona shuddered.  It was a ghastly sight, and she was thankful to run up the stairs and go from the keep out into the spring sunshine.  She had always had a romantic admiration for the Middle Ages, but this aspect of thirteenth-century life did not commend itself to her.  “They were bad old times, after all!” she decided, and came to the conclusion that the twentieth century, even with its horrible war, was a more humane period to live in.

At the foot of the crag, close by the river, lay the remains of the old Priory Church, an ivy-covered fabric, whose broken chancel still gave a shelter to the battered tombs of the knights who had lived in the Castle above.  Sir Bevis and Dame Philippa lay here in marble, their features calm and rigid, their hands folded in prayer, less human indeed, but infinitely grander than in their wax effigies of the tower.  Seven centuries of sunshine and storm had passed over their heads, and castle and church were alike in ruins.

    “Their bones are dust,
    Their good swords rust,
    Their souls are with the Saints, we trust,”

thought Winona, as she took a photograph of the quiet scene.  It was deeply interesting, but on this glorious lovely spring day it seemed a little too sad.  With all the birds singing, and the hedges in bud, and the daisies showing white stars among the grass, she wanted to live in the present, and not in the past.  And yet, if we think about it rightly, the past is never really sad.  Those who lived before us accomplished their work, and have passed onwards—­a part of the world scheme—­to, we doubt not, fuller and worthier work beyond.  We, still in the preparatory class of God’s great school, cannot yet grasp the higher forms, but those who have been moved up surely smile at our want of comprehension, and look back on this earth as the College undergraduate remembers his kindergarten; for the spiritual evolution goes ever on, working always Godwards, and when the human dross falls away, the imperfect and the partial will be merged into the perfect and the eternal.  The broken eggshells may lie in the old nest, but the fledged larks are singing in the blue of the sky.