itors
come and go without our being any the wiser, unless we are out at night.
Before sunrise they will be far, far away, and will probably never
return any more. Time after time we have been startled by a flight of
duck rising abruptly from the stream, in places where by day one would
never dream of looking for them. Foxes, too, may be seen within a
stone's throw of the house on a moonlight evening. They love to prowl
around on the chance of a dainty morsel, such as a fat duck or a
semi-domestic moorhen. Nor will they take any notice of you at such
a time.

I made a midnight expedition once last hunting season to see that the
"earths" were properly stopped in some small coverts situated on a bleak
and lonely spot on the Cotswold Hills. On the way I had to pass close to
a large barrow. Weird indeed looked the old time-worn stone that has
stood for thousands of years at the end of this old burial mound. A
small wood close by rejoices in the name of "Deadman's Acre." The moon
was casting a ghastly light over the great moss-grown stone and the
deserted wolds. The words of Ossian rose to my lips as I wondered what
manner of men lay buried here. "We shall pass away like a dream. Our
tombs will be lost on the heath. The hunter shall not know the place of
our rest. Give us the song of other years. Let the night pass away on
the sound, and morning return with joy." Then, as the rustling wind
spoke in the lifeless leaves of the beeches, the plain seemed to be
peopled with strange phantasies--the ghosts of the heroes of old. And a
voice came back to me on the whispering breeze:

"Thou, too, must share our fate; for human life is short.
Soon will thy tomb be hid, and the grass grow rank on thy grave."

MACPHERSON'S _Ossian_.

And sometimes when I have been up on the hills by night, and, looking
away over the broad vale stretched out below, have seen in the distance
the gliding lights of some Great Western express--a trusty
weight-carrier bearing through the darkness its precious burden of
humanity--I thought of the time when the old seas ran here. And then
there seemed to come from the direction of the old White Horse and
Wayland Smith's cave the faint murmuring sound of the "Blowing-stone"
("King Alfred's bugle-horn")--that summoner of men to arms a thousand
years ago, like the beacons of later days that "shone on Beachy Head";
and I felt like a man standing at the prow of a mighty liner, "homeward
bound," o