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The cross-roads lay empty. Neither man nor beast trod the hard yellow ruts of the four wentways, and the long, unfenced corners of land, rank with coarse grass and sour with thistles, pastured neither goat nor hog. The only dwelling near was Holly Crouch, and that was hidden away behind Dodyland Shaw. The soldiers were scarcely pleased to have no spectators; the rioting crowds that had tried to protect their idols in the first years of destruction would not be unwelcome now. But even when they smote the monument with their crowbars and shouted at it in their religious zeal, none answered but a faint echo from the shaw, and the sighing rush of the wind whose mainguard on the seas was driving King Philip to the Orkneys.

The cross was soon a headless shaft.

"Sing ho! for Headless Cross! Down there, beneath that tree, My mother cradled me . . ."

sang one of the soldiers sentimentally, while the others smote the shaft into a stump. The stones were old, and cracked and crumbled easily. The soldiers' work was soon done. They were disheartened because no one had tried to stop them.