Many other inscriptions and devices are seen, among them the letters, P B A E S, said to be the initials of an invocatory sentence, "_Propitiemini beati ad eternam salutem_," addressed to Saints Thomas and Margaret, the patron saints of Thomas and Margaret Mors. But, stranger than any, is the appearance of the entire alphabet on these walls. Many attempts have been made to explain the reason of this, among them the view that the object was to educate the villagers in the rudiments of spelling! XXX THE long rise out of Stratford on the way to Ipswich lies through a beautiful Gainsborough-like woodland, with ancient trees gripping sandy banks in a tenacious clutch of gnarled roots. It is a hollow road, and one in which, when the coaches were toiling up, the guards' hands went instinctively towards their blunderbusses and swordcases. One never knew what or who might be lurking in that shade. But if it was a chancy spot then, how very suspicious a place it must have been hundreds of years before. That it was so regarded may be learnt from the _Paston Letters_, the instructive correspondence of the Paston family in the fifteenth century. Therein we read how a rival of John Paston in the wardship of one of the Fastolf family, coming out of Suffolk to London, was escorted by a hundred retainers, all armed with bows and arrows in their hands, with saletts on their heads, well-padded jacks and rusty haubergeons on their bodies, and fear in their hearts of an ambush laid on the part of the Pastons in the hollow way where the trees meet overhead and a mid-day darkness broods under the dense foliage. This rival expressed himself as not being afraid of the Pastons or any of their friends; but if not, why did he go escorted with this motley crew, tricked out with all the ancient weapons and rusted armour they could find? Happily they were not attacked, but that it was possible for petty warfare of this kind to be plotted is proof that the Merry England of that period was no safe place for peaceful travellers.