Page:Over fen and wold; (IA overfenwold00hissiala).pdf/195

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being lost at times—otherwise why do people go into mazes.

ANCIENT LANDMARKS Just about here, it must be confessed, our map failed us; indeed, I am inclined to think that it omitted some of the roads altogether: quite possibly the engraver may have confused them with the river or the innumerable dykes that intersect the land in every direction. The more we studied the map the more confused we became, till we folded it up and put it carefully away, lest it should cause us to use bad language. A map that fails, just when you most need its guidance, what a temper-trying thing it is! However, a gentleman we met later on during our tour had something more temper-trying to contend with: it appeared that he started out touring in a motor-*car, and the thing broke down utterly, on an unsheltered stretch of road in the midst of a drenching thunderstorm, so that he had to beg the loan of a horse from a farmer to get the machine housed. To make the matter worse, some of the people thought it a matter to laugh over, to see a horse lugging the helpless motor along; but remembering that horses sometimes go lame on a journey (though whilst touring we have never been delayed by such a mishap), we sympathised with our fellow-wayfarer.

Before we put our map away, however, a close scrutiny of it revealed to us two spots marked with a cross, and after each cross the legends respectively of "Kenulph's Stone" and "St. Guthlak's Cross." The former of these was one of the four boundary stones of "the halidome" of the Abbey, and may still be found by the side of the Welland; the broken