Never did hermit choose a lovelier spot for his orisons; but this hermit of Warkworth was a man of industry and taste. He used the hammer and the chisel well. He made for himself a chapel, a confessional, and a dormitory, and none of these did he leave without ornament. There is a groined roof, and there is a rood above the doorway, and there is the recumbent figure of a lady with upraised hands. Whosoever chooses to weave legends about the hermitage of Warkworth is at liberty to do so, for nothing is certainly known of the hermit. The received tradition is to be found in Percy's "Reliques," where a member of the family of Bertram by mistake slays his sweetheart and his brother, and expiates his double crime by isolating himself from his kind. The Coquet is very beautiful here, with a mile walk through woods and meadow lands. After the Hermitage a sweet bend of the river brings Warkworth Castle in sight. It stands high up on the summit of grassy slopes, which have a few shrubs scattered about them. Here it was that, according to Shakespeare's narrative of events, Henry Hotspur read the letter of "a pagan rascal--an infidel," who would not join him in his designs against the Crown. The next scene is in the Boar's Head Tavern, Eastcheap, with Poins and Prince Hal. Shakespeare was so far adherent to fact that Hotspur actually lived at Warkworth Castle. Edward III. had conferred it on the second Lord Percy, and until the middle of the fifteenth century the Percies preferred Warkworth to Alnwick. The Castle is one of the most beautiful and perfect ruins in England. It is not only finely situated, but is unique in design, suggesting less of strength than of taste in constructing a palace which must also be a stronghold. A living novelist, the best of our story tellers, has made Warkworth the starting-point of one of his Christmas tales, and has most admirably conveyed to the reader the feeling of the place. Whom should I mean but Mr. Walter Besant? The church where his hero did penance, and where his heroine bravely stood beside her lover, is at the foot of the village street, which slopes upward to the height on which the Castle stands. Just beyond the church is the great stone archway through which the town must be entered, standing at the inner side of the bridge over the Coquet stream. Altogether, the village does not amount to much. It has a few good inns, and a few old-fashioned cottages. But it is as sweet a place as is to be found in all the countryside, and is therefore much in favour with persons in search of a brief, quiet holiday.