n flowers; past quaint
wooden mill-houses, through Boisingham Old Common, windy looking even
now, and brightened here and there with a dash of golden gorse, till
it was lost beneath the picturesque cluster of red-tiled roofs that
marked the ancient town. Look which way he would, the view was lovely,
and equal to any to be found in the Eastern counties, where the
scenery is fine enough in its own way, whatever people may choose to
say to the contrary, whose imaginations are so weak that they require
a mountain and a torrent to excite them into activity.

Behind the house to the north there was no view, and for a good
reason, for here in the very middle of the back garden rose a mound of
large size and curious shape, which completely shut out the landscape.
What this mound, which may perhaps have covered half an acre of
ground, was, nobody had any idea. Some learned folk write it down a
Saxon tumulus, a presumption to which its ancient name, "Dead Man's
Mount," seemed to give colour. Other folk, however, yet more learned,
declared it to be an ancient British dwelling, and pointed
triumphantly to a hollow at the top, wherein the ancient Britishers
were supposed to have moved, lived, and had their being--which must,
urged the opposing party, have been a very damp one. Thereon the late
Mrs. Massey, who was a British dwellingite, proceeded to show with
much triumph /how/ they had lived in the hole by building a huge
mushroom-shaped roof over it, and thereby turning it into a summer-
house, which, owing to unexpected difficulties in the construction of
the roof, cost a great deal of money. But as the roof was slated, and
as it was found necessary to pave the hollow with tiles and cut
surface drains in it, the result did not clearly prove its use as a
dwelling place before the Roman conquest. Nor did it make a very good
summer house. Indeed it now served as a store place for the gardener's
tools and for rubbish generally.

CHAPTER II

THE COLONEL MEETS THE SQUIRE

As Colonel Quaritch was contemplating these various views and
reflecting that on the whole he had done well to come and live at
Honham Cottage, he was suddenly startled by a loud voice saluting him
from about twenty yards distance with such peculiar vigour that he
fairly jumped.

"Colonel Quaritch, I believe," said, or rather shouted, the voice from
somewhere down the drive.

"Yes," answered the Colonel mi