Dean Stanley's visits to Alderley were frequent. The last time he occupied the pulpit of the old church was on the 5th of May, 1878, when he preached before a crowded congregation in aid of the fund for restoring the church. On a more recent visit, though pressed for time, he stopped by the way at the cottage of a suffering parishioner, offered words of comfort and prayer by his bedside--"the same prayer," as he afterwards remarked, "that he had used by the bedside of his own dear wife." His final visit was in the autumn of 1880, on his return from a short sojourn in the Isle of Man, when he visited the rectory and his mother's and sister's grave, accompanied by his friend, the Bishop of Manchester. CHAPTER III. RIVINGTON AND THE LORDS WILLOUGHBY--THE PILKINGTONS--THE STORY OF A LANCASHIRE BISHOP. "No, sir, hardly a vestige of the old house remains, and even the Willoughby coat of arms with the supporters, the ivy-wreathed savage and the horseshoe-eating ostrich, that once adorned and gave dignity to the outbuilding, has been taken away by sacrilegious hands, and now only a blank space remains to show where once it was." Such was the remark of a friend at whose hospitable abode in Heath-Charnock we were spending a few days, a year or two ago, in reply to our inquiries as to the present condition of Shaw Place, an ancient habitation on the confines of Rivington, once the home of the Lords Willoughby of Parham. But Rivington and its vicinity have other associations to claim attention not less interesting than the fading memories of the extinct Willoughbys. The tower-crowned summit of the Pike, rising to the height of 1,545 feet above the sea level, calls to remembrance the stirring times of the Armada, and the scarcely less anxious days of nearly a century ago when our grandfathers were in daily dread of invasion, and constant watch was kept in order that the beacon fire might flash the signal of danger from hill to hill should their fears be realised; and the "Two-lads," a double pile of stones on the further side, has its tale of disaster to beguile the time if we care to listen to it. Those bleak mountain ridges that stretch away towards the south were once included within the limits of the great forest of Horwich, "a place of great sport," as the old chroniclers have it, with its aëries of eagles, of hawks, and of herons. Rivington was for centuries the home of the Pilkingtons, "gentlemen of repute in their shire before the Conquest," as old Fuller tells us; if tradition is to be relied on, the chief of them bore himself bravely upon the red field of Hastings, and when sought for by the victors for espousing the cause of the defeated Harold, to avoid discovery, disguised himself as a mower, in commemoration of which circumstance his descendants have ever since borne the man and scythe for their crest. A scion of this ancient house, Richard Pilkington, in the days of the Eighth Harry or shortly