prisoner whom I wanted to be most carefully watched, I should intrust him to your charge; if I had a prisoner whom I wished to be most tenderly treated, I should intrust him to your care." The house, which now belongs to the VanSittart family, is a picturesque old structure of grey stone, with pointed gables, mullioned windows, and a low tower; portions of it, for instance, the tower and the hall--once part of the convent chapel--are remnants of Montacute's abbey; but the larger portion of the building is later than the date of the suppression of the religious orders, most of it being late Tudor work, due to the Hoby family. Bisham is said to have its ghost. Lady Hoby, wife of Sir William, "walks" in one of the bedrooms, appearing as the duplicate, in opposite tints, of a portrait which hangs in the hall, and engaged in "washing her hands with invisible soap in imperceptible water," in a basin which, self-supported, moves on before her. This is the cause which disturbs her rest: "She had a child William, who, being a careless or clumsy urchin, kept always blotting his copy-book; so the mother did not spare the rod, and spoiled the child in a physical sense, for she whipped Master William till he died." The author of "Murray's Guide-Book to Berkshire" states, as a curious coincidence, if not a corroboration of the story, that on altering the shutter of a window "a quantity of children's copy-books of the reign of Elizabeth were discovered pushed into the rubble between the joists of the floor, and that one of these was a copy-book which answered exactly to the story, as if the child could not write a single line without a blot." Bisham has also its secret chamber, an indication that it was built when political struggles had their real perils. Bisham Priory in former days--perhaps owing to its connection with the Montacutes, Earls of Salisbury--was the burial-place of several distinguished men, whose monuments once adorned the priory chapel, but have disappeared since it became a dwelling-place. The following list of such interments is testimony to the perilous life led by the aristocracy of those days:--"Thomas, Earl of Salisbury, who died at the siege of Orleans in 1428; Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury and Warwick, beheaded at York in 1460; Richard Neville, 'the king-maker,' killed at the battle of Barnet, 1470; his brother John, Marquis of Montague, killed at the same battle; and Edward Plantagenet, son of the Duke of Clarence, beheaded in 1499, for attempting to escape from confinement." "The paths of glory lead but to the grave" was a true saying in the days of old. Between the foeman's sword on the one hand and the headsman's axe on the other, a goodly proportion of our nobility came to untimely ends.