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At Norman Cross, a tiny hamlet with a suggestive name, situated about a mile on our way out of Stilton, there are the slight remains of the colony of barracks that were erected in the last century, wherein some thousands of French prisoners were confined during the Napoleonic wars. From Norman Cross we drove merrily along until we came to the pretty village of Water Newton, pleasantly situated by the side of the river Nen, or Nene,—for I find it spelt both ways on my map. Here the time-mellowed church, placed rather in a hollow a meadow's length away from the road, attracted our attention, though why it especially did so I hardly know, for there was apparently nothing particularly noteworthy about it, at least not more so than any one of the other country fanes we had passed unregarded by that day. Moreover, our tastes for the moment did not incline to things ecclesiastical. But it is a fact, that now and then, without any definable cause, a certain spot, or place, will excite one's interest and arouse within one a strong desire to stop and explore it: such sentimental, but very real, feelings defy all reasoning; they exist but cannot be explained or reduced to an argument.

So half-involuntarily we pulled up here. "We must see that old church," we exclaimed, though wherefore the compulsion we did not inquire of ourselves; but we went, in spite of the fact that it was getting late and that we had some miles more to accomplish before we reached Stamford, our night's destination. In the churchyard we noticed