was a work of solemn prayer and praise.  The ancient stones were preserved, and wherever modern masonry was used, it was cunningly worked in to look as time-worn as the Norman walls, while the lancet windows were filled with genuine old stained glass purchased by degrees from different parts of England, each fragment being properly authenticated.  A groined roof, simple yet noble in outline, covered in the building; ornamented with delicately rounded mouldings alternated with hollows so planned as to give the most forcible effects of light and shade according to the style of English Early Pointed work, and the only thing that was left incomplete was the pierced circular window above the chancel, which Walden sought to fill with stained glass of such indubitable antiquity and beauty of design that he was only able to secure it bit by bit at long intervals.  While engaged in collecting this, he judged it best to fill the window with ordinary clear glass rather than put in inferior stuff. age system exactly in the middle of the chancel, fronting the altar, we will let it remain there and occupy its own original place.  The chancel could not have a grander ornament!

And so, in the middle of the chancel, between the altar and the steps which separated that part of the church from the main body of the building, the mysterious undated relic lay under the warm light of the eastern window, and people who were interested in antiquities came from far and near to see it, though they could make no more of it than Walden himself had done.  The cross and sword might possibly indicate martyrdom; the laurels and thorn fame.  Certainly there were no signs that the dumb occupant of that sealed coffer was a monarch of merely earthly power and state.  When the alabaster came to be thoroughly cleansed and polished, part of the inscription could be deciphered in the following letters of worn gold: 

Sancta. vixit.  Sancta obit..  In. coelum.. sanctorum., transmigravit...  In Resurrectione Sanctorum resurget M..  Beatse. ma..  R.

But to what perished identity these significant words applied remained an impenetrable mystery.  Every old record was carefully searched,—­every scrap of ancient history wherein the neighbourhood of St. Rest had ever been concerned was turned over and over by the patient and indefatigable John Walden, who followed up many suggestive tracks eagerly and lost them again when apparently just on the point of finding some sure clue,—­till at last he gave up the problem in despair and contented himself and his parishioners by accepting the evident fact that in the old church at one time or another some saint or holy abbot had been buried,—­hence the name of St. Rest or ‘The Saint’s Rest,’ which had become attached to the village.  But at what exact period such saint or abbot had lived and died, was undiscoverable.