THE GARDEN 345 



the ceiling, and with weird fiends guarding or 

 threatening on the outer rim all concur in 

 bringing the dim and distant past into this 

 twentieth century. Needless to add, there is a 

 ghost ; but upon that subject, as old Herodotus 

 would have said, "let us preserve a religious 

 silence." Better to say too little about it than too 

 much. 



The surroundings are in keeping with the 

 building. On the north side of the house is the 

 " Ladies' garden," with its formal beds well suited 

 for a blaze of summer flowers. The old brick wall 

 round it is topped by heavy projecting coping 

 stones, which, in the full glare of the sun them- 

 selves, enable large tufts of the shade-loving Scotch 

 maiden-hair to nestle beneath them. Further 

 along, a " Cyclopean " wall, built of the roughest 

 stones, and with the queerest slopes and angles, 

 makes room in its interstices, now, for the nests of 

 the starling or the house-sparrow, and now, for 

 full-grown plants of valerian and wall-flower, of 

 fox-glove and snap-dragon. Beneath, heaves a 

 mysterious, grave-like looking mound of turf, with 

 an equally mysterious chamber deep below, above 

 and around which you might well imagine " in the 

 struggling moonbeams' misty light," and when 



