And strangers passing by in after years would pause by the well-kept graves, and reading some beautiful meaning in the words upon the marble, would ask to whose memory they had been written, and would hear from the faithful villagers the story of the curse of Bryn Afon and of the beautiful lives of the lovers who had restored the crumbling walls to honour and renown, and caused the ancient name of that house to be once more loved and revered throughout the valley. And their tears would fall as they told of the faithful, yet in this world ever hopeless, love of their vicar for the Lady Shanno, who had been worshipped by rich and poor for her exceeding loveliness, and who, for the curse inherited from her forefathers, had forsworn for the sake of Christ all earthly love and marriage. And with hushed voices they would yet further tell of that wild night in January, when all the village wept for the murder of the king, and when to crown their woe their church was burnt to the ground by their enemies, and in wrath the river-spirit arose, and swept away the boatman's bridge, and drowned the luckless lovers in its fury. And the travellers, passing on, would gaze up from the river banks upon the fast-crumbling battlements, frowning above them from the steep greensward's summit, and think with mingled awe and pleasure upon the tragic scenes enacted within those old walls; then, walking yet farther down the stream, would, an it chanced to be in the spring-time, marvel at the wondrous wealth of the yellow primroses which clothed the mossy banks, and would be told by the children how, ever since the night when the Lily and the Primrose had slept their last sleep in the river, the primroses had sprung up each spring season, along the banks by which their bodies had floated, in ever-increasing profusion; and how, in the hollow by the still pool in which their fair forms had been discovered, some lingering yellow blossoms ever tarried year by year until the lilies of the valley sprang up behind their shining leaves, that they might greet them with a lover's kiss of welcome, ere they passed away beneath the brightness of the summer sun. THE WALTER SCOTT PRESS, NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.