e deer which the abbots had hunted were conspicuous
by their absence. Garvington looked after it about as much as he did
after the rest of his estates, which was not saying much. The fat, round
little lord's heart was always in the kitchen, and he preferred eating
to fulfilling his duties as a landlord. Consequently, the Abbot's Wood
was more or less public property, save when Garvington turned crusty and
every now and then cleared out all interlopers. But tramps came to sleep
in the wood, and gypsies camped in its glades, while summer time brought
many artists to rave about its sylvan beauties, and paint pictures of
ancient trees and silent pools, and rugged lawns besprinkled with
rainbow wild flowers. People who went to the Academy and to the various
art exhibitions in Bond Street knew the Abbot's Wood fairly well, as it
was rarely that at least one picture dealing with it did not appear.

Miss Greeby had explored the wood before and knew exactly where to find
the cottage mentioned by Lady Garvington. On the verge of the trees she
saw the blue smoke of the gypsies' camp fires, and heard the vague
murmur of Romany voices, but, avoiding the vagrants, she took her way
through the forest by a winding path. This ultimately led her to a
spacious glade, in the centre of which stood a dozen or more rough
monoliths of mossy gray and weather-worn stones, disposed in a circle.
Probably these were all that remained of some Druidical temple, and
archaeologists came from far and near to view the weird relics. And in
the middle of the circle stood the cottage: a thatched dwelling, which
might have had to do with a fairy tale, with its whitewashed walls
covered with ivy, and its latticed windows, on the ledges of which stood
pots of homely flowers. There was no fence round this rustic dwelling,
as the monoliths stood as guardians, and the space between the cottage
walls and the gigantic stones was planted thickly with fragrant English
flowers. Snapdragon, sweet-william, marigolds, and scented clove
carnations, were all to be found there: also there was thyme, mint,
sage, and other pot-herbs. And the whole perfumed space was girdled by
trees old and young, which stood back from the emerald beauty of
untrimmed lawns. A more ideal spot for a dreamer, or an artist, or a
hermit, or for the straying prince of a fairy tale, it would have been
quite impossible to find. Miss Greeby's vigorous and coarse personality
seemed to break in a noisy m