It may be imagined that I was loth to say farewell; but at last I tore myself away with those pains of parting, which are the penalty of a traveller’s friendships. The clock of the old cathedral tolled eleven as I passed under its aged tower on my return to the inn. In the morning I rose early, and took a walk down the vale, some two or three miles, to a secluded spot, where ancient piety had erected a chapel over a fountain, and where it now stands in one of the most picturesque piles of ruin I ever beheld. This was a favorite haunt of Mrs. Hemans, and one to which she has devoted some sweet verses. It goes, among the English, by the title of “St. Mary’s Well,” but the Welsh call it _Pfynonver Capél_, a very musical and pleasing name, as they pronounce it. There it stands in a green mead, under the shade of a tufted hill, enwound with ivy and covered with venerable moss; you enter the door, and in the sacred floor you behold a pool of lucid water, encompassed with an ancient kerb of stone, which preserves all the grace of outline of the base of a massive column in a Gothic cathedral. The old architect has shown, in this peculiarity of his pool, a truly inventive genius. I am sure the legends of the sacred spot must have been many and most romantic. A hurried walk back to St. Asaph, concluded my sojourn in the vale of Clwyd. Verily, “it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps;” my plans in visiting this retired spot had all been frustrated; but so happy a disappointment has seldom fallen to my lot. The very slender enjoyment of puzzling mine host, with surmises as to my mysterious errand, had been lost in one of the richest pleasures of my life, and I went my way from a place which I had sought a few hours before as containing nobody to whom I could make myself known, feeling that it would be dear to me till death, as the home of beloved friends.