As the lark rose through the brightening air to greet the coming day, a woman
in the tunic and cowl of a nun opened what was left of the wicket-gate in the
one unbattered wall. A trace of the luxury that had dwelt under the gilded
spires survived in her robes, which had been of a royal purple and embroidered
with silken flowers; but the voice of Time and of Ruin spoke from them also,
for the purple was faded to a rusty brown, and the silken embroideries were
threadbare. She struck a note in perfect harmony with her surroundings, as she
stood under the crumbling arch, peering out into the flowering lane.

Stretching away from her feet in dewy freshness, it made a green link between
the herb-garden of St. Mildred's and the highway of the Watling Street. Like
the straggling hedges that were half buried under a net of wild roses, red and
white, the path was half effaced by grass; but beyond, her eye could follow
the straight line of the great Roman road over marsh and meadow and hill-top.
If grass had gathered there also, during the Anglo-Saxon times, there were no
traces of it now, in the days of Edmund Ironside when Canute of Denmark was
leading his war-host back and forth over its stones. Between the dark walls of
oak and beech, it gleamed as white as the Milky Way. The nun was able to trace
its course up the slope of the last hill. Just beyond the crest, a pall of
smoke was spread over a burning village. Though it was miles away, it seemed
to her that the wind brought cries of anguish to her ear, and prayers for
mercy. Shivering, she turned her face back to the desolate peace of the ruins.

"Now is it clear to all men why a bloody cloud was hung over the land in the
year that Ethelred came to the throne," she said. "I feel as the blessed dead
might feel should they be forced to leave the shelter of their graves and look
out upon the world."

Rising from its knees beside a bed of herbs, a second figure in faded robes