There is the gentle plash of the waves on the sands of Old Town Bay behind; the shrill cry of the gulls, sounding for all the world like the clamour of children let loose from school; the distant panting of the fussy little motor-boat which takes the trawlers out to sea; the lowing of cattle in the neighbouring farmyard, with pigs and poultry joining in the chorus; the twitter and rustle of birds in the veronica hedge; the liquid love-song of a thrush as he puts the important question, ”_Will_ you, _will_ you, _will_ you?” and answers it himself with a sudden change of note, “She _will_, she _will_, she _will_.” And lying beneath and all around all other sounds are the myriad gentle murmurs of the Spring, that wondrous stirring and pulsation of life which can be felt but cannot be defined. And now a human note breaks in upon the rest. From a cottage near by there rises the song of a little girl, mingling with the clatter of cups and saucers as she washes up the breakfast-things, because mother is busy in the tying-shed. “With smiles of peace and looks of love Light in our dwellings we may make,” shrills the childish voice; and so on through every verse to the end, till she finishes with a quaintly quavering and long-drawn-out, “A-a-amen.” [Illustration: PICKING FLOWERS BY THE CASTLE ROCKS] There is a very human legend which connects this old Castle with the convent that is said to have stood in Holy Vale. The story runs that the Earl of Cornwall once had a young and beautiful ward, whom he kept shut up in the Castle of Ennor in charge of an ancient duenna. No one knew who the lovely girl was, but she was thought to be of noble birth. There was a page in attendance at the Castle; and it is not to be wondered at if the hearts of this young pair, isolated as they were from others of their age and station, were drawn together by a mutual attraction. Signs of this did not escape the lynx-eyes of the ancient dame, and she straightway sent a message to the Earl in Cornwall by the hands of the page, who little knew that he was the bearer of that which sealed his own fate and that of her he loved. He was detained on the mainland, and made an esquire in the Earl’s following, while she was ordered to be sent at once to the convent of Holy Vale. She remained sad and silent during the year of her novitiate, taking interest in nothing except the tending of a rose-bush, which she made her special care. When the time came for her to take the vows, she mysteriously disappeared from the chapel where she was keeping midnight vigil, and was seen no more until, many years later, she was found in that same chapel, lying dead before the altar, with no sign of age upon her pure face, and with a cluster of roses in her bosom. Her lover is said to have been killed in battle many years before. There is still a rose-tree growing up between the stones at Holy Vale, which the children used to look upon as the bush of Sister Mary.