ome hidden still. If I could
only have found it, I'd be buying a castle for you and me to live in.
Sir Lionel thinks that I, as his ward, will live in his castle; and he
was telling me at Corfe about the Norman tower at Graylees. But, alas, I
knew better. Oh, I didn't mean that "alas"! Consider it erased; and the
other silly things I wrote you the other night, please. They're all so
_useless_.

There were loads of interesting prisoners in Corfe Castle, at one time
or another, knights from France, and fair ladies, the fairest of all,
the beautiful "Damsel of Brittany," who had claims to the English crown.
And kings have visited there; and in Cromwell's day a lady and her
daughters successfully defended it in a great siege. It was such a
splendid and brave defence that it seems sad, even to this day, to think
how the castle fell after all, a year later, and to see the great stones
and masses of masonry lying, far below the height, exactly where they
rolled when Parliament ordered the conquered towers to be blown up by
gunpowder. The Bankes family, who still own Corfe, must be proud of that
Lady Bankes, their ancestress, who held the castle. And isn't it nice,
the Bankes still have the old keys, where they live, at Kingston Lacy?

You like Thomas Hardy's "Hand of Ethelberta" next to "Far from the
Madding Crowd." Well, Coomb Castle in that book is really Corfe Castle.
I told you we were in Hardy country. After Wareham, and not very far
away, at Wool, is an old, old manor-house of the Turbervilles, turned
into a farmhouse now. You don't need to be reminded of what Hardy made
of that, I know.

We lunched at an interesting old inn, like all the rest of the ancient
houses of Corfe, slate-roofed, grim and gray. Then we coasted down the
steep hill to the plain again, making for Swanage. It was dusty, but we
weren't sorry, because, just when we were travelling rather fast, on a
perfectly clear road, a policeman popped out like a Jack-in-the-Box,
apparently from nowhere. You could tell by his face he was a "trappist,"
as Dick calls the motor-spies, and though Sir Lionel wasn't really going
beyond the legal limit, he glared at our number as if he meant mischief.
But that number-plate had thoughtfully masked itself in dust, so with
all the will in the world he could work us no harm after our backs were
turned. Once in a while it does seem as if Nature sympathized with the
poor, maligned motorist whom nobody loves, and is willing to