e.

You may see him any day. In fact, he is the old man who shows you over
the battlefield for fifty cents and explains how he himself fought and
won the great battle.

VIII

BUGGAM GRANGE

A GOOD OLD GHOST STORY

_VIII.--Buggam Grange: A Good Old Ghost Story._

The evening was already falling as the vehicle in which I was contained
entered upon the long and gloomy avenue that leads to Buggam Grange.

A resounding shriek echoed through the wood as I entered the avenue. I
paid no attention to it at the moment, judging it to be merely one of
those resounding shrieks which one might expect to hear in such a place
at such a time. As my drive continued, however I found myself wondering
in spite of myself why such a shriek should have been uttered at the
very moment of my approach.

I am not by temperament in any degree a nervous man, and yet there was
much in my surroundings to justify a certain feeling of apprehension.
The Grange is situated in the loneliest part of England, the marsh
country of the fens to which civilization has still hardly penetrated.
The inhabitants, of whom there are only one and a half to the square
mile, live here and there among the fens and eke out a miserable
existence by frog-fishing and catching flies. They speak a dialect so
broken as to be practically unintelligible, while the perpetual rain
which falls upon them renders speech itself almost superfluous.

Here and there where the ground rises slightly above the level of the
fens there are dense woods tangled with parasitic creepers and filled
with owls. Bats fly from wood to wood. The air on the lower ground is
charged with the poisonous gases which exude from the marsh, while in
the woods it is heavy with the dank odours of deadly nightshade and
poison ivy.

It had been raining in the afternoon, and as I drove up the avenue the
mournful dripping of the rain from the dark trees accentuated the
cheerlessness of the gloom. The vehicle in which I rode was a fly on
three wheels, the fourth having apparently been broken and taken off,
causing the fly to sag on one side and drag on its axle over the muddy
ground, the fly thus moving only at a foot's pace in a way calculated to
enhance the dreariness of the occasion. The driver on the box in front
of me was so thickly muffled up as to be indistinguishable, while the
horse which drew us was so thickly coated with mist as to be practically
invisible. Seldom, I may say, have I