XVII.

Here we rested awhile, where all was still. Only the booming of the bees disturbed the ear, and one solitary wayfarer passed in the space of two hours. This was one who toured, even as ourselves, afoot, but one who dressed up to the part, with gaiters and Norfolk jacket and great Balbriggan stockings. He was walking as if for a wager; and while we sniffed at this toil of pleasure, he eyed us as he flashed past with some amusement, as who should smile at exhausted rivals.

“FLASHED PAST.”

Presently we set out again and came through Wootton to Christchurch, that fine old town lying between the rivers Stour and Avon, with a great priory church, that gives the place its accepted name, superseding the old-time designation of Twyneham. Here is a Norman house, and close by is the site of the castle, now converted into a public pleasure-ground, where a notice-board warns visitors that the penalty for using bad language is not less than forty shillings.

There is an old altar-tomb in the churchyard that has long been a mystery, and in all probability will ever remain one. No one knows what its strange inscription means, although its strangeness invites research, nor who the “ten” were who are buried here, nor who were the “men of strife” that twice buried them: a most enthralling mystery; who will rede the riddle of this cryptic inscription:—

WE WERE NOT SLAYNE BVT RAYSD,
 RAYSD NOT TO LIFE
 BUT TO BE BVRIED TWICE
 BY MEN OF STRIFE
 WHAT REST COVLD TH LIVING HAVE
 WHEN DEAD HAD NONE
 AGREE AMONGST YOV
 HEERE WE TEN ARE ONE
HEN: ROGERS DIED APRILL 17, 1641
I · R ·

Here is another tombstone: one, this time, that arouses, not curiosity, but an unseemly mirth, by reason of its curious illiteracy. It dates from 1720.

“Here Lieth in hope
 of A Joyful Resurrecti
 on the Body of LUCY ye
 Daughter of Richard and
 Lucy baset Who departed
 this Life February ye 16th day
 Heark, heark I hears A voice
 The Lord made sweet bab
 es for his one choyce and
 when his will and pleasurE
 is there Bodys he turns to
 Dust there Souls to Rain
 with Christ one High.”

By way of Southborough-on-Sea, that struggling maze of stuccoed, melancholy houses, we left Christchurch, and came upon the parched and desolate undulations of that sandy waste, Pokesdown, like nothing so much as a bankrupt outpost of civilisation in the back blocks of Australia.

We had asked a fat and florid countryman, who surely was out of place here, how far it was to Bournemouth.

“We calls it a matter of fower mile,” he said. Those reputed four miles proved to be nearer six than four; better measure than the “reputed” pints or quarts of commerce.