me that the little wild folk loved the spot, I found 
among the hollyhocks growing in the old garden 
lot as plump a rabbit as ever gnawed a turnip 
in the moonlight. 
After seeing all these things I could not share 
the feeling of the man who had taken me there, 
for he had said: ‘There is nothing to see when 
you get there.” 
However, this was before I had heard the 
story about why the Lipsey place was deserted, 
and of the strange traveller who was murdered 
in the house one rainy, windy night many 
years before. Lipsey, it seems, was hanged for 
his crime and those who inherited the farm 
would not live on it. No one would buy it, so 
that was why the birds and rabbits and other 
wild things had it all to themselves. 
I do not know why some people are so foolish 
as to believe in ghosts. But there are such 
people, and some of them live in the rather 
thinly settled country around the Lipsey place. 
Nor has it ever been explained to me why ghosts 
are supposed to dwell in old, abandoned houses. 
Yet there are those who think that this old 
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