Some people call the tawny, the screech owl, and if ever I felt like screeching it was this September full moon under the scudding clouds as I perched in the same tree as on my previous visit to the Pershore Abbey graveyard. The intermittent wan moonlight filtered through its branches to chequer the cheerless graves. At moments I half-expected a ghastly apparition to emerge from the dumb turf because my brain was reeling with thoughts of skulls, coffins, epitaphs and worms. Were the venerable dead, in the gloomy horror of the grave, whose youthful blood, spilt to defend freedom, somehow looking down on my efforts to emulate them? Never had I felt as vulnerable as in that churchyard, where silence reigned until rent by the caw of a raven high on the abbey tower—the call of the bird of death
