most interesting
stories into their notebooks, and anybody who could borrow an
out-of-print guide-book, and collect any fresh legends to add to the
list, scored considerably.

Another valuable and well-nigh inexhaustible source of information was
discovered by the girls in their friends at home. Grandfathers and
grandmothers recalled tales of their childhood, and would relate how, as
youngsters of ten, they had hurried past Greyfriars Gate in the
twilight, because the ghost of a wicked abbot was supposed to haunt the
vicinity, and you might see his grey robes gliding among the shadows
when the sun set. Some of them remembered when Miller's Pond, now quite
a suburban piece of water, was known as Dragon's Pool, and had been a
romantic spot half-smothered in willows, with a legend of a dragon who
lived there and would come to the castle walls to demand victims.

"Legend hunting is almost like treasure seeking," declared Lesbia. "You
never know what you may find."

Lesbia was very happy at school this term, in spite of skirmishes with
Miss Pratt over Latin and Algebra, her two worst subjects. She felt she
was taking an active part in the school life, and contributing her quota
in a very substantial measure to the benefit of VA, whose walls looked
already much improved. The hockey season had begun also, and though she
had not yet won special distinction in the playing-field, she had
occasionally wrung a word or two of encouragement from Rose Stirling,
the Games Captain, sufficient to elate her for the moment, and make her
keener at next practice. She loved those Wednesday afternoons when she
donned her short blue skirt and scarlet blouse and pads, and went with
her team to the big field rented by the school. The autumn nip in the
air made exercise pleasant, and the love of sport, inherent in everyone
of even diluted British blood, brought all her Anglo-Saxon tendencies to
the fore.

As the mediaeval dwellers in Kingfield must have fought in the lists, and
shot arrows at the butts, and wrestled, or cudgelled with quarter-staffs
in the meadows, so their descendants enjoyed themselves in the
playing-fields, demonstrating the modern theory that girls need physical
training as much as boys, and can play a game with equal keenness and
observance of rules.

October, with its whirling leaves and bursts of fitful sunshine, had
worn itself away and given place to November mists. Hallow-e'en had come
and gone, and the half-term