How pleasant it can be, alone in a first-class railway carriage, on the first day of a holiday that is to be fairly long, to dawdle through a bit of English country that is unfamiliar, stopping at every station. You have a map open on your knee, and you pick out the villages that lie to right and left by their church towers. You marvel at the complete stillness that attends your stoppage at the stations, broken only by a footstep crunching the gravel. Yet perhaps that is best experienced after sundown, and the traveler I have in mind was making his leisurely progress on a sunny afternoon in the latter half of June.

He was in the depths of the country. I need not particularise further than to say that if you divided the map of England into four quarters, he would have been found in the south-western of them.

He was a man of academic pursuits, and his term was just over. He was on his way to meet a new friend, older than himself. The two of them had met first on an official inquiry in town, had found that they had many tastes and habits in common, liked each other, and the result was an invitation from Squire Richards to Mr. Fanshawe which was now taking effect.

The journey ended about five o’clock. Fanshawe was told by a cheerful country porter that the car from the Hall had been up to the station and left a message that something had to be fetched from half a mile farther on, and would the gentleman please to wait a few minutes till it came back? ‘But I see,’ continued the porter, ‘as you’ve got your bystile, and very like you’d find it pleasanter to ride up to the ‘all yourself. Straight up the road ‘ere, and then first turn to the left — it ain’t above two mile — and I’ll see as your things is put in the car for

You’ll excuse me mentioning it, only I though it were a nice evening for a ride. Yes, sir, very seasonable weather for the haymakers: met me see, I have your bike ticket. Thank you, sir; much obliged: you can’t miss your road, etc., etc.’

The two miles to the Hall were just what was needed, after the day in the train, to dispel somnolence and impart a wish for tea. The Hall, when sighted, also promised just what was needed in the way of a quiet resting-place after days of sitting on committees and college-meetings. It was neither excitingly old nor depressingly new. Plastered walls, sash-windows, old trees, smooth lawns, were the features which Fanshawe noticed as he came up the drive. Squire Richards, a burly man of sixty odd, was awaiting him in the porch with evident pleasure ‘Tea first,’ he said, ‘or would you like a longer drink? No? All right, tea’s ready in the garden. Come along, they’ll put your machine away. I always have tea under the lime-tree by the stream on a day like this.’ Nor could you ask for a better place. Midsummer afternoon, shade and scent of a vast lime-tree, cool, swirling water within five yards. It was long before either of them suggested a move. But about six, Mr. Richards sat up, knocked out his pipe, and said: ‘Look here, it’s cool enough now to think of a stroll, if you’re inclined? All right: then what I suggest is that we walk up the park and get on to the hill-side, where we can look over the country. We’ll have a map, and I’ll show you where things are; and you can go off on your machine, or we can take the car, according as you want exercise or not. If you’re ready, we can start now and be back well before eight, taking it very easy.’

‘I’m ready. I should like my stick, though, and have you got any field-glasses? I lent mine to a man a week ago, and he’s gone off Lord knows where and taken them with him.’

Mr. Richards pondered. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I have, but they’re not things I use myself, and I don’t know whether the ones I have will suit you. They’re old-fashioned, and about twice as heavy as they make ‘em now. You’re welcome to have them, but I won’t carry them. By the way, what do you want to drink after dinner?’

Protestations that anything would do were overruled, and a satisfactory settlement was reached on the way to the front hall, where Mr. Fanshawe found his stick, and Mr. Richards, after thoughtful pinching of his lower lip, resorted to a drawer in the hall-table, extracted a key, crossed to a cupboard in the panelling, opened it, took a box from the shelf, and put it on the table. ‘The glasses are in there,’ he said, ‘and there’s some dodge of opening it, but I’ve forgotten what it is. You try.’ Mr. Fanshawe accordingly tried. There was no keyhole, and the box was solid, heavy and smooth: it seemed obvious that some part of it would have to be pressed before anything could happen. ‘The corners,’ said he to himself, ‘are the likely places; and infernally sharp corners they are too,’ he added, as he put his thumb in his mouth after exerting force on a lower corner.

‘What’s the matter?’ said the Squire.

‘Why, your disgusting Borgia box has scratched me, drat it,’ said Fanshawe. The Squire chuckled unfeelingly. ‘Well, you’ve got it open, anyway,’ he said.

‘So I have! Well, I don’t begrudge a drop of blood in a good cause, and here are the glasses. They are pretty heavy, as you said, but I think I’m equal to carrying them.’

‘Ready?’ said the Squire. ‘Come on then; we go out by the garden.’

So they did, and passed out into the park, which sloped decidedly upwards to the hill which, as Fanshawe had seen from the train, dominated the country. It was a spur of a larger range that lay behind. On the way, the Squire, who was great on earthworks, pointed out various spots where he detected or imagined traces of war-ditches and the like. ‘And here,’ he said, stopping on a more or less level plot with a ring of large trees, ‘is Baxter’s Roman villa.’ ‘Baxter?’ said Mr. Fanshawe.

‘I forgot; you don’t know about him. He was the old chap I got those glasses from. I believe he made them. He was an old watch-maker down in the village, a great antiquary. My father gave him leave to grub about where he liked; and when he made a find he used to lend him a man or two to help him with the digging. He got a surprising lot of things together, and when he died — I dare say it’s ten or fifteen years ago — I bought the whole lot and gave them to the town museum. We’ll run in one of these days, and look over them. The glasses came to me with the rest, but of course I kept them. If you look at them, you’ll see they’re more or less amateur work — the body of them; naturally the lenses weren’t his making.’

‘Yes, I see they are just the sort of thing that a clever workman in a different line of business might turn out. But I don’t see why he made them so heavy. And did Baxter actually find a Roman villa here?’

‘Yes, there’s a pavement turfed over, where we’re standing: it was too rough and plain to be worth taking up, but of course there are drawings of it: and the small things and pottery that turned up were quite good of their kind. An ingenious chap, old Baxter: he seemed to have a quite out-of-the-way instinct for these things. He was invaluable to our arch?ologists. He used to shut up his shop for days at a time, and wander off over the district, marking down places, where he scented anything, on the ordnance map; and he kept a book with fuller notes of the places. Since his death, a good many of them have been sampled, and there’s always been something to justify him.’

‘What a good man!’ said Mr. Fanshawe.

‘Good?’ said the Squire, pulling up brusquely.

‘I meant useful to have about the place,’ said Mr. Fanshawe. ‘But was he a villain?’

‘I don’t know about that either,’ said the Squire; ‘but all I can say is, if he was good, he wasn’t lucky. And he wasn’t liked: I didn’t like him,’ he added, after a moment.

‘Oh?’ said Fanshawe interrogatively.

‘No, I didn’t; but that’s enough about Baxter: besides, this is the stiffest bit, and I don’t want to talk and walk as well.’

Indeed it was hot, climbing a slippery grass slope that evening. ‘I told you I should take you the short way,’ panted the Squire, ‘and I wish I hadn’t. However, a bath won’t do us any harm when we get back. Here we are, and there’s the seat.’

A small clump of old Scotch firs crowned the top of the hill; and, at the edge of it, commanding the cream of the view, was a wide and solid seat, on which the two disposed themselves, and wiped their brows, and regained breath.

‘Now, then,’ said the Squire, as soon as he was in a condition to talk connectedly, ‘this is where your glasses come in. But you’d better take a general look round first. My word! I’ve never seen the view look better.’

Writing as I am now with a winter wind flapping against dark windows and a rushing, tumbling sea within a hundred yards, I find it hard to summon up the feelings and words which will put my reader in possession of the June evening and the lovely English landscape of which the Squire was speaking.

Across a broad level plain they looked upon ranges of great hills, whose uplands — some green, some furred with woods — caught the light of a sun, westering but not yet low. And all the plain was fertile, though the river which traversed it was nowhere seen. ‘There were copses, green wheat, hedges and pasture-land: the little compact white moving cloud marked the evening train. Then the eye picked out red farms and grey houses, and nearer home scattered cottages, and then the Hall, nestled under the hill. The smoke of chimneys was very blue and straight. There was a smell of hay in the air: there were wild roses on bushes hard by. It was the acme of summer.

After some minutes of silent contemplation, the Squire began to point out the leading features, the hills and valleys, and told where the towns and villages lay. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘with the glasses you’ll be able to pick out Fulnaker Abbey. Take a line across that big green field, then over the wood beyond it, then over the farm on the knoll.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Fanshawe. ‘I’ve got it. What a fine tower!’

‘You must have got the wrong direction,’ said the Squire; ‘there’s not much of a tower about there that I remember, unless it’s Oldbourne Church that you’ve got hold of. And if you call that a fine tower, you’re easily pleased.’

‘Well, I do call it a fine tower,’ said Fanshawe, the glasses still at his eyes, ‘whether it’s Oldbourne or any other. And it must belong to a largish church; it looks to me like a central tower — four big pinnacles a the corners, and four smaller ones between. I must certainly go over there. How far is it?’

‘Oldbourne’s about nine miles, or less,’ said the Squire. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve been there, but I don’t remember thinking much of it. Now I’ll show you another thing.’

Fanshawe had lowered the glasses, and was still gazing in the Oldbourne direction. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I can’t make out anything with the naked eye. What was it you were going to show me?’

‘A good deal more to the left — it oughtn’t to be difficult to find. Do you see a rather sudden knob of a hill with a thick wood on top of it? It’s in a dead line with that single tree on the top of the big ridge.’

‘I do,’ said Fanshawe, ‘and I believe I could tell you without much difficulty what it’s called.’

‘Could you now?’ said the Squire. ‘Say on.’

‘Why, Gallows Hill,’ was the answer.

‘How did you guess that?’

‘Well, if you don’t want it guessed, you shouldn’t put up a dummy gibbet and a man hanging on it.’

‘What’s that?’ said the Squire abruptly. ‘There’s nothing on that hill but wood.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Fanshawe, ‘there’s a largish expanse of grass on the top and your dummy gibbet in the middle; and I thought there was something on it when I looked first. But I see there’s nothing — or is there? I can’t be sure.’

‘Nonsense, nonsense, Fanshawe, there’s no such thing as a dummy gibbet, or any other sort, on that hill. And it’s thick wood — a fairly young plantation. I was in it myself not a year ago. Hand me the glasses, though I don’t suppose I can see anything.’ After a pause: ‘No, I thought not: they won’t show a thing.’

Meanwhile Fanshawe was scanning the hill — it might be only two or three miles away. ‘Well, it’s very odd,’ he said, ‘it does look exactly like a wood without the glass.’ He took it again. ‘That is one of the oddest effects. The gibbet is perfectly plain, and the grass field, and there even seem to be people on it, and carts, or a cart, with men in it. And yet when I take the glass away, there’s nothing. It must be something in the way this afternoon light falls: I shall come up earlier in the day when the sun’s full on it.’

‘Did you say you saw people and a cart on that hill?’ said the Squire incredulously. ‘What should they be doing there at this time of day, even if the trees have been felled? Do talk sense — look again.’

‘Well, I certainly thought I saw them. Yes, I should say there were a few, just clearing off. And now — by Jove, it does look like something hanging on the gibbet. But these glasses are so beastly heavy I can’t hold them steady for long. Anyhow, you can take it from me there’s no wood. And if you’ll show me the road on the map, I’ll go there tomorrow.’

The Squire remained brooding for some little time. At last he rose and said, ‘Well, I suppose that will be the best way to settle it. And now we’d better be getting back. Bath and dinner is my idea.’ And on the way back he was not very communicative.

They returned through the garden, and went into the front hall to leave sticks, etc., in their due place. And here they found the aged butler Patten evidently in a state of some anxiety. ‘Beg pardon, Master Henry,’ he began at once, ‘but someone’s been up to mischief here, I’m much afraid.’ He pointed to the open box which had contained the glasses.

‘Nothing worse than that, Patten?’ said the Squire. ‘Mayn’t I take out my own glasses and lend them to a friend? Bought with my own money, you recollect? At old Baxter’s sale, eh?’

Patten bowed, unconvinced. ‘Oh, very well, Master Henry, as long as you know who it was. Only I thought proper to name it, for I didn’t think that box’d been off its shelf since you first put it there; and, if you’ll excuse me, after what happened . . . ‘ The voice was lowered, and the rest was not audible to Fanshawe. The Squire replied with a few words and a gruff laugh, and called on Fanshawe to come and be shown his room. And I do not think that anything else happened that night which bears on my story.

Except, perhaps, the sensation which invaded Fanshawe in the small hours that something had been let out which ought not to have been let out. It came into his dreams. He was walking in a garden which he seemed half to know, and stopped in front of a rockery made of old wrought stones, pieces of window tracery from a church, and even bits of figures. One of these moved his curiosity: it seemed to be a sculptured capital with scenes carved on it. He felt he must pull it out, and worked away, and, with an ease that surprised him, moved the stones that obscured it aside, and pulled out the block. As he did so, a tin label fell down by his feet with a little clatter. He picked it up and read on it: ‘On no account move this stone. Yours sincerely, J. Patten.’ As often happens in dreams, he felt that this injunction was of extreme importance; and with an anxiety that amounted to anguish he looked to see if the stone had really been shifted. Indeed it had; in fact, he could not see it anywhere. The removal had disclosed the mouth of a burrow, and he bent down to look into it. Something stirred in the blackness, and then, to his intense horror, a hand emerged — a clean right hand in a neat cull and coat-sleeve, just in the attitude of a hand that means to shake yours. He wondered whether it would not be rude to let it alone. But, as he looked at it, it began to grow hairy and dirty and thin, and also to change its pose and stretch out as if to take hold of his leg. At that he dropped all thought of politeness, decided to run, screamed and woke himself up.

This was the dream he remembered; but it seemed to him (as, again, it often does) that there had been others of the same import before, but not so insistent. He lay awake for some little time, fixing the details of the last dream in his mind, and wondering in particular what the figures had been which he had seen or half seen on the carved capital. Something quite incongruous, he felt sure; but that was the most he could recall.

Whether because of the dream, or because it was the first day of his holiday, he did not get up very early; nor did he at once plunge into the exploration of the country. He spent a morning, half lazy, half instructive, in looking over the volumes of the County Arch?ological Society’s transactions, in which were many contributions from Mr. Baxter on finds of flint implements, Roman sites, ruins of monastic establishments — in fact, most departments of arch?ology. They were written in an odd, pompous, only half-educated style. If the man had had more early schooling, thought Fanshawe, he would have been a very distinguished antiquary; or he might have been (he thus qualified his opinion a little later), but for a certain love of opposition and controversy, and, yes, a patronising tone as of one possessing superior knowledge, which left an unpleasant taste. He might have been a very respectable artist. There was an imaginary restoration and elevation of a priory church which was very well conceived. A fine pinnacled central tower was a conspicuous feature of this; it reminded Fanshawe of that which he had seen from the hill, and which the Squire had told him must be Oldbourne. But it was not Oldbourne; it was Fulnaker Priory. ‘Oh, well,’ he said to himself, ‘I suppose Oldbourne Church may have been built by Fulnaker monks, and Baxter has copied Oldbourne tower. Anything about it in the letterpress? Ah, I see it was published after his death — found among his papers.’

After lunch the Squire asked Fanshawe what he meant to do.

‘Well,’ said Fanshawe, ‘I think 1 shall go out on my bike about four as far as Oldbourne and back by Gallows Hill. That ought to be a round of about fifteen miles, oughtn’t it?’

‘About that,’ said the Squire, ‘and you’ll pass Lambsfield and Wanstone, both of which are worth looking at. There’s a little glass at Lambsfield and the stone at Wanstone.’

‘Good,’ said Fanshawe, ‘I’ll get tea somewhere, and may I take the glasses? I’ll strap them on my bike, on the carrier.’

‘Of course, if you like,’ said the Squire. ‘I really ought to have some better ones. If I go into the town today, I’ll see if 1 can pick up some.’ ‘Why should you trouble to do that if you can’t use them yourself?’ said Fanshawe.

‘Oh, I don’t know; one ought to have a decent pair; and — well, old Patten doesn’t think those are fit to use.’

‘Is he a judge?’

‘He’s got some tale: I don’t know: something about old Baxter. I’ve promised to let him tell me about it. It seems very much on his mind since last night.’

‘Why that? Did he have a nightmare like me?’

‘He had something: he was looking an old man this morning, and he said he hadn’t closed an eye.’

‘Well, let him save up his tale till I come back.’

‘Very well, I will if I can. Look here, are you going to be late? If you get a puncture eight miles off and have to walk home, what then? I don’t trust these bicycles: I shall tell them to give us cold things to eat.’

‘I shan’t mind that, whether I’m late or early. But I’ve got things to mend punctures with. And now I’m off.’

It was just as well that the Squire had made that arrangement about a cold supper, Fanshawe thought, and not for the first ............