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.