There are two or three fords in the course of the next few miles, all of the same character. A rather notable one is that at Shifford. The legend runs that in the locality Alfred the Great held one of his earliest Parliaments, and there and then gathered "many thanes, many bishops, and many learned men, proud earls, and awful knights." This was to a great extent Canute's country. A mile or two on the Berkshire side of the river, near Bucklands, is kept the Pusey horn, given to the family by that king. The inscription upon it is, "I, King Knoude, give William Pewse this horne to holde by thy londe." There are some doubts, however, as to whether these letters are not of later date than the time of Canute. At Longworth, another village, there are the remains of an ancient encampment, Cherbury Camp, and here, it is said, a palace of Canute's once stood. The River Windrush, a more considerable tributary than any previously received by the Thames, flows into the parent river from the north at Newbridge. The point of debouchment might, by reason of the weeds and rushes in the water and overhanging bushes of the banks, be easily overlooked by a casual observer, and the Windrush, in this peculiarity, closely resembles other feeders of the Thames, in looking its meanest where it offers its volume to the parent river. The Windrush is one of the Cotswold brood, and at Bourton-on-the-Water it becomes a valuable trout stream. Great Barrington, whose freestone quarry furnished the stone for Christopher Wren's restoration of Westminster Abbey, is opposite the village of Windrush; the river afterwards enters Oxfordshire, and by the peculiar quality of its waters gives to the town of Witney a special pre-eminence in the whiteness of the blankets produced by its fulling mills. The river is thirty-five miles long from source to inlet to the Thames. [Illustration: THE FERRY, BABLOCK HYTHE.]