many have journeyed home; all the Romans who are dead, when it
was their fortress, and the Saxons who came after them, and
others without count."

Then they turned and entered the old church--one of the first
that ever was in Britain, rough-built of Roman stone by the very
hands of Chad, the Saxon saint, more than five hundred years
before their day. Here they knelt a while at the rude altar and
prayed, each of them in his or her own fashion, then crossed
themselves, and rose to seek their horses, which were tied in the
shed hard by.

Now there were two roads, or rather tracks, back to the Hall at
Steeple--one a mile or so inland, that ran through the village
of Bradwell, and the other, the shorter way, along the edge of
the Saltings to the narrow water known as Death Creek, at the
head of which the traveller to Steeple must strike inland,
leaving the Priory of Stangate on his right. It was this latter
path they chose, since at low tide the going there is good for
horses--which, even in the summer, that of the inland track was
not. Also they wished to be at home by supper-time, lest the old
knight, Sir Andrew D'Arcy, the father of Rosamund and the uncle
of the orphan brethren, should grow anxious, and perhaps come out
to seek them.

For the half of an hour or more they rode along the edge of the
Saltings, for the most part in silence that was broken only by
the cry of curlew and the lap of the turning tide. No human
being did they see, indeed, for this place was very desolate and
unvisited, save now and again by fishermen. At length, just as