189S 1 ] I Bathe in St. Winifred's Well 293 



degrees, but I did the traditional three journeys through the water up 

 to my armpits, going down into it by steps and up the opposite side, 

 and then took a complete dip over my head in the outer tank and knelt 

 on St. Bruno's stone. I was quite alone while doing this, except for 

 George. Then, when I had dressed, we sat awhile together in the 

 sun, and went on to the inn for luncheon, where Sibell was, and so 

 home in the afternoon to Saighton. The buildings of the well are 

 still almost perfect, the shrine just as it was put up in Henry VII's 

 time, not a stone of the pavement renewed nor anything of the modern 

 kind except some wooden dressing sheds and a few stupid scrolls with 

 texts hung up inside the shrine. 



' 13^ April. — I have had no pain all day, thanks to St. Winifred, 

 a long night of sleep and to-day no pain. I spent the afternoon with 

 Sibell, talking about the chances of life and death and of a world be- 

 yond. The longer I live, the less I believe in any such, at least as 

 far as my own living again goes. I feel that I have worn out my vital 

 force and that eternity can bring me nothing but a dreamless sleep. 

 All the same, I believe in St. Winifred and her Well, and include her 

 in my canon prayer as my patron saint, which I have a right to do, 

 seeing that I was named after my great-grandmother, Winifred 

 Scawen." 



My miraculous cure thus wrought did not last long. I had no sooner 

 turned my back to St. Winifred and Saighton than my pains began 

 again, and I began to think that the Saint had made a fool of me. I 

 saw new doctors in London, but they were unable to help me, and 

 after lingering on there until the 6th of May I went down to New- 

 buildings to bear my troubles alone. " The world," I wrote, " is only 

 meant for those who are in health, and the maxim of our forefathers 

 was a sound one, that a dying man should keep wholly out of sight." 

 This was the last entry in my diary before the crisis came. On the 

 following Sunday, after a night of great suffering, I broke a blood- 

 vessel, and for a week or more lay in danger of death, nursed by the 

 careful hands of the good Cowie, our housekeeper, and of Sydney 

 Cockerell, who had just entered on his duties with me as my private 

 secretary. Between them and my hospital nurse, Miss Lawrence, who 

 then first undertook my charge, they saved my life. Then I recognized 

 that St. Winifred had only deferred her benefits, and that, as in the 

 case of most miracles, she had chosen a natural road of cure. How- 

 ever that might be, the cure, though it nearly killed me, was an in- 

 disputable one. The pain from which I had been suffering so long 

 had left me desperately weak, it is true, in body but clear in mind, 

 and able once more to take an interest in life, and at the end of three 

 weeks to resume my diary. The first entry I find in it contains the 

 following: 



