Chester is now a very interesting place, full of quaint, old-fashioned houses, with high pointed roofs and carved gables turned toward the streets, which are wide and straight. The walls remain nearly perfect--not preserved for defence, but as relics of the old fighting times. The Dee is a strange looking river when the tide is low, for the sands stretch far out on each side. Mr. Kingsley, an English author, in a beautiful song, tells a sad story of a poor girl, who was sent one evening to call the cattle home across these wide sands. A blinding mist came up and the tide came in, but Mary never came home--only as she floated ashore the next morning, drowned. A little way off the railway track, lies Maes Garmon, the scene of a great victory gained by the Britons over the Scots and Picts, in 429. It was in the season of Lent;--the Britons had assembled in great numbers, in a valley amid the mountains, to listen to the preaching of St. Germanus and Bishop Lupus. These holy men preached with such extraordinary power, that thousands of rude warriors came forward, vociferously professing religion, and eager to be baptized. The enemy, hearing of this by their scouts, thought that here would be a fine opportunity to take them by surprise, and hastened to the spot to make the attack. But St. Germanus somehow got wind of their coming, and, taking the pick of the warriors; conducted them to a pass through which the heathen army must enter the valley. As soon as the enemy appeared, the Saint, lifting the rood in his hands, shouted three times at the top of his voice, "Hallelujah!" All his warriors repeated the cry, and the mountains echoed and reëchoed it, till their caves and forests seemed to be alive with lurking Britons. The bloody-minded heathens were so astonished and frightened by this strange Christian uproar, that they flung down their aims and ran for their lives! The Britons, instead of going on with their Hallelujahs, as I think they should have done, took after them with great fury--slew thousands and drove thousands into the river, where they were drowned. It was a queer way to win a battle that--scaring the enemy out of their wits by shouting holy words at them. I doubt whether the plan would succeed as well in our enlightened Christian times. The next object of interest is Flint Castle, to which King Richard II. was carried as a prisoner, and where he met the banished Bolingbroke, who was soon to step into his royal shoes and dub himself King Henry IV.