254 ADVENTURES AMONG BIRDS 



whole of that long period. Squire, parsons, farmers, 

 labourers, he remembered them all — the old-style 

 farmers who sat at meat with their men before the 

 division of classes, and before the piano came in and 

 the church organ to kill the villager's' music. Also 

 the fairies and ghosts. The tricksy little people were 

 not seen but were known to be about in a field close 

 by, " Fairy Field " it was called because when it was 

 being ploughed the horses invariably stopped short 

 at a certain spot and refused to go on. Eventually, 

 during the late owner, Sir Charles Shelley's, time a 

 well-preserved Roman pavement was discovered by 

 chance at a depth of three to four feet, just on the spot 

 over which the horses had always refused to draw the 

 plough ! The other supernatural story relates to an 

 old house adjoining the village and overlooking the 

 quiet valley of the Itchen. Here, tradition says, a 

 crime was committed by a former owner, and from 

 the time of his death the place was haunted, but in 

 a singular way ; at all events I have never heard any 

 ghost story quite like it. At night when the air was 

 perfectly still, a sound as of a sudden high wind could 

 be heard among the trees, travelling like a whirlwind 

 in the direction of the house but invariably on coming 

 to the house it would die away into silence. 



The old clerk introduced me to one of his life-long 

 pals and asked him to tell me his story of the ghost. 

 The story was that when he was a young man about 

 fifty years ago, he went to the house one still dark night 

 about midnight to get some apples. There was a 



