We had ourselves a little difficulty in getting beyond the nave. We had gone in an hour before service on a Sunday evening, hoping to be allowed to walk around the choir, but we incurred scathing rebuke from a red-haired verger, who had practised like eloquence on Sunday automobile parties until his flow of denunciation was Hebraic. We gave way at once, expressed due contrition, and meekly sat down to wait for evensong. Whereupon, after furtively scrutinising us from behind one pillar after another, he cautiously approached and with searching little blue eyes severely inquired if we really intended to stay for the service,--"all through the sermon, ye understand; not just for the music." Our reply so raised us in his opinion that he actually took us on the rounds, proving an intelligent and even jocose conductor, and we, for our part, heard the sermon to the very end, not daring to stir from our places until the last note of "Milton's organ" had died away.
Many visitors come to this attractive old town, with its timbered houses and pleasant river-walks, for the sake of "John Halifax, Gentleman." The scenes of Mrs. Craik's tender romance, Abel Fletcher's dwelling, the mill on the Avon, the tannery, the remains of the famous hedge, the garden where the two lads talked, are pointed out as soberly and simply as that ancient house in Church Street whose floor is said still to keep the stain of princely blood, or the cross where the Duke of Somerset and his companions, dragged from the shelter of the Abbey in violation of the king's own promise, were beheaded.
But the Severn, with ever-broadening flow, a tidal river now that fills and shallows twice a day, bears onward to the sea. Her course lies for a while through orchards and wheat-fields. The Cotswolds, separating the Severn valley from the basin of the Thames and constituting the bulk of Gloucestershire, rise in billowy outlines on the east and, presently, Dean Forest, one of the few remaining patches of England's formerly abundant woods, uplifts its "broad and burly top" on the west. The earth beneath those oaks and beeches has hoards of mineral wealth, and furnaces are scattered through the forest glades. At Gloucester the Severn divides, that