My great hound walked at my heels. At night she is always watchful, and is haunted by a persistent sense of danger. But even she, that still night, could find nothing to be alarmed about, or to hurl defiance at. All the world seemed bathed in a mystic sapphire bath of splendour, and round me I knew that mystic process of what we call life was silently but rapidly taking form. I could almost feel the budding of the trees, for the wonderful revelation of summer was at hand. To-night, on an ancient larch, one of the first I have heard that was planted in Shropshire, a storm-cock, as the country people call the missel-thrush, piped into the growing night. What a joyous song his was. He had sung on and off, since January, and his voice was almost the loudest and clearest of all the feathered songsters. No cold could daunt him, but soon he would be silent, for the storm-cock sings little after May. The world, where not spoilt by smoke and man, was very fair and full of wonderful things. All was flowering and growing apace. As I stood in the ruined church, love and joy seemed to be borne upon the soft winds as they fanned my face and played amongst the tender leaves. I sat down by the ancient lavabo and looked at the ruined church. How much the walls might tell me if they could but speak. What stories of stately processions, for kings and queens were often the guests of the Prior of Wenlock. Henry I., Henry III., and his queen Eleanor came, if tradition says true, Charles Stuart, when fate fought against him, and Impetuous Rupert, at least to Wenlock. Then the story runs that Arthur and his Spanish bride passed through Wenlock on their way to Ludlow. And as I sat there and mused, I thought of all the great ones who had passed through and spent days, happy or otherwise, at Wenlock--the world's delight and wonder, they were all gone, and the Abbey too, which was once the pride of Catholicism in Shropshire, the meeting-place of devout pilgrims, the resort of royalty, that too had gone. Its walls have served to build cottages. Its splendour is a thing of the past, and the owl and the wild birds fly where once abbot and friar paced in solemn devotion. [Illustration: _Photo by Mr. W. Golling._ THE LAVABO.] In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the church was used as a quarry, the old folks have often said. "No need to dig out stone," one old wheezy man told me; "when cottages was run up, us used to know where to go, for pigsties, or even a patch on the road. Have in a cart, and down went a bit of the Abbey. It was mighty handy, a deal better than blasting the rock as they do now to rear a wall." "King Collins," as the old people used to call Sir Watkin's agent, who lived in the red-brick house which is now the Vicarage, carted away whatever he had a mind to. "What he set his heart on that he took," another old man said, "and put it afore his own door."