On the summit of one of the hills, called Haresdown Hill, overlooking the town, stood the parish church—a grey, weather-beaten edifice with a high tower inhabited by hundreds of jackdaws, and bats innumerable; and encircled by a churchyard where many crumbling tombstones, with almost obliterated inscriptions, testified to the antiquity of the burying-ground. The church was nearly a mile from the town, and the winding road, which led to it up the hill, was a favourite walk of Wreyford people, who were justly proud of the fine old building standing in solitary stateliness, keeping watch, as it were, over the town beneath. It had been built and endowed in the twelfth century by a famous follower of Richard I, as a thank-offering to God for his safe return from the Holy Land, where he had been engaged in the crusades; his tomb was on the north side of the church, within an arch with full-size effigies of himself and his wife in marble. The old church could have told many an exciting tale of the years it had seen. Cromwell's soldiery had battered in the great west door, and had slain the parish clerk, who had vainly endeavoured to defend the house of God. At the entrance of the porch was a stone let into the pavement to the memory of the brave old man, which told that— "Ezekiel Hassal, 46 years clark heere, dyed 19th February, 1631." It was at this particular stone that two little girls were looking one fine Saturday afternoon in December as they sat side by side on a bench within the church porch. They were Dinah and Dora Mickle, daughters of Mr. Jabez Mickle, the owner of the best practice as a solicitor in Wreyford. Dinah, the elder of the two children, was twelve years old, and she was in charge of Dora, who was only eight; they were resting awhile before going home, having been for a long walk. The story of Ezekiel Hassal's fate always had a great attraction for little Dora, and she had insisted upon hearing it again from Dinah's lips, although she knew it quite well, and shuddered as she listened. She was a sensitive, imaginative child, and could easily picture Cromwell's fierce soldiery ascending the green slope of the hill, the figure of the old parish clerk stationed before the door of the church he loved so well, and the tragedy which had followed. "Oh, Dinah!" she cried, "mustn't it have been a terrible, terrible sight! Are you not glad we did not live in those days?" "Yes," Dinah returned, "because I shouldn't have known whether to side with the king or Cromwell." "Oh, Dinah! Why, they cut off the poor king's head!" Dora exclaimed, almost in tears at the very thought. "That could not have been right, could it?"