the nearest innkeeper and started off for it. The man
who drove me had lived in the neighbourhood, so he found early occasion
to inform me, all his seventy odd years, and it struck him as a humorous
circumstance that he had never in his life been even as far as
Southampton, a matter of only ten minutes by rail.

We had travelled a matter of two miles when it struck me to ask my
charioteer about the place to which we were proceeding. It was within
the bounds of possibility, I thought, that he might once have known my
father. I determined to try him. So waiting till we had passed a load of
hay coming along the lane, I put the question to him.

To my surprise, he had no sooner heard the name than he became as
excited as it was possible for him to be.

"Hatteras!" he cried. "Be ye a Hatteras? Well, well, now, dearie me,
who'd ha' thought it!"

"Do you know the name so well, then?"

"Ay! ay! I know the name well enough; who doesn't in these parts? There
was the old Squire and Lady Margaret when first I remember. Then Squire
Jasper and his son, the captain, as was killed in the mutiny in foreign
parts--and Master James----"

"James--that was my father's name. James Dymoke Hatteras."

"You Master James' son--you don't say! Well! well! Now to think of that
too! Him that ran away from home after words with the Squire, and went
to foreign parts. Who'd have thought it! Sir William will be right down
glad to see ye, I'll be bound."

"Sir William, and who's Sir William?"

"He's the only one left now, sir. Lives up at the House. Ah, dear! ah,
dear! There's been a power o' trouble in the family these years past."

By this time the aspect of the country was changing. We had left the
lane behind us, ascended a short hill, and were now descending it again
through what looked to my eyes more like a stately private avenue than a
public road. Beautiful elms reared themselves on either hand and
intermingled their branches overhead; while before us, through a gap in
the foliage, we could just distinguish the winding river, with the
thatched roofs of the village, of which we had come in search, lining
its banks, and the old grey tower of the church keeping watch and ward
over all.

There was to my mind something indescribably peaceful and even sad about
that view, a mute sympathy with the Past that I could hardly account
for, seeing that I was Colonial born and bred. For the first time since
my arrival in England the real beauty o