as a dip, or rather hollow in the elevated downs, it afforded ample space for the combatants and spectators, and those who stood on the highest point of what--had seats been cut in the broad slope--might have been termed an amphitheatre, looked down on the rich and smiling banks of the Avon and the Nadder, with the venerable towers of Wilton Abbey.[6] Here then, were often witnessed the proudest exhibitions of chivalric enterprise, and often did the little Ela gaze with awe and wonder from the windows of her father's castle, on knight and banners, and all the pomp and pageantry of those heroic games. Scarcely, however, had Ela attained her eighth year, when the Earl of Salisbury having died, after a short illness, she became the orphan heiress of his princely patrimony, and an exile; for scarcely had the banners, and the scutcheons, and the mutes passed by, and all the pomp of death went after him to his last resting-place, than the little Ela suddenly disappeared, and was nowhere to be found. Some said that her mother sought her sorrowing; others, that she gave but little heed, and that while knights and servants rode the country over, asking questions of all they met, and exploring every brake and hollow on the ample downs; returning ever and anon, either with some hope of finding the lost child, or else to consult with her lady mother concerning the next course to pursue; she alone seemed as if indifferent to the matter. The countess had large possessions in Normandy or Champaign, and it was at length conjectured that the orphan had been sent to her relations, lest King Richard should avail himself of his feudal right, to marry her according to his will. But such was not the case, though true in part, as respected her distant home. Ela had three uncles, of whom the eldest was next heir to the great possessions of the deceased earl. No historic light gleams on the biography of these kinsmen, excepting that being younger brothers, without patrimony, and unmarried, they retired into the monastery of Bradenstoke.[7] Yet tradition tells, that when the elder brother heard of Ela's fatherless condition, he threw aside his cowl, and assumed the cuirass. It might have been, that often in the silence and the solitude of that old abbey, when passing its dimly-lighted cloisters, dark thoughts had worked within him; that scowling on his books and beads, he had contrasted his condition as a poor and obscure monk, with the grandeur and the vast possessions of the earldom of Salisbury. The pope absolved him from vows of poverty, for thus it is recorded in the traditions of the place, and forth he came, a claimant to the honours and the wealth of that illustrious house. Tradition lingers among old walls and deserted hearths; there may be nothing for history to glean, but her lowlier sister loves to keep alive the feeble glimmering of her lone lamp, in places from whence all other light is gone.