directed to do his duty; and the full penalty was paid." Leaving the ruined mansion we drop down to the seashore, passing Bexhill on the way to Hastings, which is now a modern city of sixty-five thousand people, its red-brick, tile-roofed houses rising in terraces overlooking the sea. Once it was an important seaport, but here the sea has advanced and wiped out the harbor, and it is now chiefly known as a watering-place. A few miles from the town was fought the Battle of Hastings, which stamped the name so deeply on English history and marked the overthrow of the Saxon dynasty. On a precipitous hill looking far over town and sea stands the scanty ruin of its castle, whose story is much clouded, though legend declares it was built by the Conqueror. Far greater is the attraction of the unspoiled old towns of Winchelsea and Rye, a few miles farther on the coast road. A former visit gives them a familiar look, but we stop an hour in Rye. The receding sea robbed these towns of their importance hundreds of years ago, and their daily life is now quite undisturbed by modern progress. Each occupies a commanding hill separated by a few miles of low-lying land. A local writer makes the truest appeal for Rye when he declares that it gives us today a presentment of a town of centuries earlier. "Rye," he says, "is southern and opulent in coloring. There is here mellowness, a gracious beauty; one has the feeling that every house and garden is the pride and love of its owner, and indeed this impression is a true one, for it is the characteristic of Rye to inspire the loving admiration of its inhabitants, whether native-born or drawn thither in later life." Rye has a magnificent church, the largest in Sussex, which overshadows the town from the very crest of the hill. A very unusual church it is, with a low cone-pointed tower and triple roofs lying alongside each other. At the end of the nave are three immense stone-mullioned windows, very effective and imposing, though the glass is modern. Queen Elizabeth presented to the church the remarkable old tower clock which has marked time steadily for more than three hundred years. The pendulum swings low inside, describing a wide arc only a little above the preacher's head. [Illustration: THE HOSPITAL, RYE. From Original Water Color by Theresa Thorp, A. R. M. S.]