it was a scene of ruin and desolation. But a mere glance was sufficient to show me that we had come by accident on a once sacred spot.
"Why this," said I, as we paused at the edge of the wood, "this is the ruin of some ancient church, or perhaps of a religious house! Look at the niche there above the arch of the door—there's been an image in that—and at the general run of the stone lying about. Certainly this is an old church! Why have we never heard of it?"
"Utterly forgotten, I should think," said Miss Raven. "It must be a long time since there were people about here to come to it."
"Probably a village down on the coast—now swept away," I remarked. "But we must look this place out in the local books. Meanwhile let's explore it."
We began to look about the clearing. The tower was almost gone as to three sides of it; the fourth was fairly intact. A line of fallen masonry lay to the north and was continued a little on the east, where it rose into a higher, ivy-covered mass. Within this again was another, less obvious line, similar in plan, and also covered with unchecked growth: within that the uneven surface of the ground was thickly encumbered with rank weeds, beds of thistle, beds of nettle, and a plenitude of bramble and gorse; in one place towards the eastern mass of overgrown wall, a great clump of gorse had grown to such a height and thickness as to form an impenetrable screen. And, peering and prying about, suddenly we came, between this screen and the foot of the tower on signs of great slabs of stone, over the edges of which the coarse
