would be almost impossible to find out. There are no coats of arms,
and what is more, no surname is given in either inscription. The one
says, 'Pray for the soul of Edmundus, Knight, husband of Phillippa,
and the other, 'Pray for the soul of Phillippa, Dame, wife of
Edmundus.' It looks as though the surnames had been left out on
purpose, perhaps because of some queer story about the pair which
their relations wished to be forgotten."

"Then why do they say that one died in blood and the other on the
field of Crecy?"

Godfrey shook his head because he did not know. Nor indeed was he ever
able to find out. That secret was lost hundreds of years ago. Then the
conversation died away and they got to their work.

At length the rubbing, as it is termed technically, was finished and
the two prepared to depart out of the gloom of the great church which
had gathered about them as the evening closed in. Solitary and small
they looked in it surrounded by all those mementoes of the dead,
enveloped as it were in the very atmosphere of death. Who has not felt
that atmosphere standing alone at nightfall in one of our ancient
English churches that embody in baptism, marriage and burial the
hopes, the desires, and the fears of unnumbered generations?

For remember, that in a majority of instances, long before the Cross
rose above these sites, they had been the sacred places of faith after
faith. Sun-worshippers, Nature-worshippers, Druids, votaries of Jove
and Venus, servants of Odin, Thor and Friga, early Christians who were
half one thing and half another, all have here bowed their brows to
earth in adoration of God as they understood Him, and in these