watery gossip of our Jocelin, we do get some glimpses of that
deep-buried Time; discern veritably, though in a fitful
intermittent manner, these antique figures and their life-method,
face to face! Beautifully, in our earnest loving glance, the old
centuries melt from opaque to partially translucent, transparent
here and there; and the void black Night, one finds, is but the
summing up of innumerable peopled luminous _Days._ Not parchment
Chartularies, Doctrines of the Constitution, O Dryasdust; not
altogether, my erudite friend!--

Readers who please to go along with us into this poor _Jocelini
Chronica_ shall wander inconveniently enough, as in wintry
twilight, through some poor stript hazel-grove, rustling with
foolish noises, and perpetually hindering the eyesight; but
across which, here and there, some real human figure is seen
moving: very strange; whom we could hail if he would answer;--
and we look into a pair of eyes deep as our own, _imaging_ our
own, but all unconscious of us; to whom we for the time are
become as spirits and invisible!




Chapter III

Landlord Edmund


Some three centuries or so had elapsed since _Beodric's-worth_*
became St. Edmund's _Stow,_ St. Edmund's _Town_ and Monastery,