right moment came for them to raise their eyes and worship the uplifted Host. [Illustration: Ashbourne Church: Door leading to the Rood-Stair.] Incidentally, again, the rood-loft would have been resorted to as a convenient place from which to reach the rood for its veiling and unveiling. And it must have been hither, also, that those whose office it was to tend and light the beam-lights would have had frequent occasion of coming. But these are points which open up the subject of the rood itself, and of the various devotions and customs that grew up around it in pre-Reformation days. The great crucifix, with the flanking statues which usually accompanied it, would either rise from the rood-loft direct, being attached to the top of the parapet, or, in the case of churches which were lofty enough to admit of it and not to cramp the heads of the figures by the roof descending too closely upon them, would be carried above the level of the rood-loft upon a separate beam crossing the eastern extremity of the nave—always provided that the essential condition was to impart the utmost dignity to the rood itself, and to insure its becoming the most conspicuous object in the whole building. Specific mention of a rood having existed in mediæval days is forthcoming in the case of the three monastic churches of Dale, Darley, and Repton, already named; in the collegiate church of All Hallows, Derby; as also in the parochial churches of Ashbourne, Bakewell, Breadsall, Chesterfield, Morley, and Repton.