 CHAPTER IX As the train rushed through the cuttings to Dover, recollections of a former journey from Canterbury to the old sink-port rose vividly before my mind. Then I had left the ancient city on the top of a coach, and a shower having laid the dust before we started, my eyes were refreshed with the cool greenery of the bishops' born woods and barram-downs, and the blue ridge on which the white spire of ash church rises on the left, and the more distant hills stretching south-easterly from Y to Limanj on the right. Now we obtained only momentary glimpses of the scenery we passed through from the narrow windows of a stuffy carriage, and those only at intervals much of the line running along the bottom of deep cuttings in the chalk hills, the almost perpendicular sides of which rise so high in some places that the sky can be seen only by protruding the head from the window. Nothing to see, even while the daylight lasted, but those white walls with a brief glimpse now and then of a rich cultivated country with blue hills in the distance, while an incessant rattle of railway joinery, varied by the harsh grating of railway mechanism and the shrill shriek of the railway whistle, rendered intelligible conversation impracticable. So I leaned back in my corner, and while the curate made an attempt to read a morning newspaper which he had bought at the bookstore at Canterbury station, and my other companions slept, passed in review the traditions concerning the haunted passage in the precinct. The superstition that made death within the year the doom of any unfortunate person who encountered the ghost of Nell Cook was haunting me, like the ghosts of sounds that so troubled the mind of a certain vicar that, on one Sunday morning, he was obliged to go into the garden and sing the lass of Garry before going to church, lest he should give out, instead of a hymn, to us on a summer afternoon. And on another actually added to the sentence beginning, when the wicked man, the fish-hawkers cry, All alive, alive, oh! I could not get out of my head the man who was gibbeted on chat and downs, and whose fate was attributed by tradition to his having seen the ghost in the dark entry. I had heard of that apparition, and of the superstition associated with it from a Canterbury and young lady many years before, even before Barum had made it the subject of one of the inimitable Ingalls' bel legends. But that was before the cacko-ethese Scribendie had brought out a periodical eruption of fiction. Now the idea of a tale was working in my mind, and before the train reached Dover the characters and incidents were dimly outlined. It was growing dark when we were whirled through or under the bare wide downs near Dover, over which David Copperfield trudged, weary and footsaw, hungry and ill-clad, on the occasion of his visit to his aunt, Miss Betsy Chotwood. Clouds had gathered during the evening, and when we alighted at the Priory Station and sniffed the briny air of the strait, they increased the obscurity of the hour so much that the night was more than ordinarily dark. Our walk of twenty-five miles from Chatham to Canterbury had left my companions no desire to proceed farther by a foot than was necessary that night. But I could not repress my desire to see the sea, and dark as the night was, I strolled down to the beach before retiring to rest, and smoked a cigarette upon one of the black piles. The scene was sublime in its wild, weird, dreariness and solitude. The dry seaweed that hung about the piles rustled in the light breeze, as if responding to the horse murmuring of the tide upon the shingle. The smooth sea stretched far away from me, with only a line of faint light separating its darkness from the darkness of the sky. A bright speck like a distant star shone upon the horizon, and away to the right there gleamed another, and these I knew to be the lights on Calais-Pierrehead and on Cape Crénais. But no sound of human life reached my ears, and those lights were so distant that they aided rather than diminished the effect of the dark and solemn sea. Lodgings had been found for the curate and myself near the house of our friend's brother-in-law, and there, before retiring to rest, I sketched the outlines of the following story. The Doomed of the Dark Entry. A quiet old city is Canterbury. Its old houses, its ivy churches and gateways, its venerable cathedral, its solemn cloisters, give it an old world air suggestive of its having been cut off from the rest of England for two or three centuries. The railway seems an incongruity, a discord, an anachronism. But for that there would be nothing of an architectural nature about the place to indicate to a Canterburyan Rip Van Winkle, who had fallen asleep a hundred years ago, that any changes had taken place during his long nap. Such care has been taken in making changes necessitated by time that they should not jar with old associations and old world notions, that Rip would not observe that the Arendelle Tower and All Saints Church have been restored, while the Norman architecture of the new building in which the Archaeopiscopal Library is located harmonizes well enough with its surroundings. As Canterbury presents itself to the eye of the tourists to-day, so therefore was it seen by Walter Gilson just a century ago, as he sauntered along the shady side of the High Street, with his friend and former school-fellow Arthur Dawling. Young Gilson was an orphan, and his father having died in indigent circumstances, though he had once had a good business in the city, he had been indebted from childhood to an uncle for a home. Uncle Barton, being intolerably affluent circumstances, his orphan nephew had received what was then esteemed a good education, had been taken into his office, and was generally expected to succeed him in the business. You're a lucky fellow," said young Dawling, cracking nuts as he spoke, and throwing the shells into the road. You come out of every trouble like a duck out of water, none the worth for it. Left an orphan at an early age you are adopted by a welter-do-uncle. Making your appearance at the Guildhall on a charge of what was it, Walter? Embezzlement, forgery? Let that alone, Arthur," said Gilson, reddening. It is time that was forgotten. So be it, rejoined Dawling. I meant no offence, Walter. I was only going to observe that you got over that as you had over every other trouble or difficulty, and here you are soon to be your uncle's son-in-law, and some day his successor in the business, and finally the inheritor of all he possesses. I say again, you are a lucky fellow, Walter. So lucky that I sometimes fear it will not last," said Gilson, unconsciously giving expression to a pagan notion with which his education had not been classical enough to make him acquainted. Why not? asked Dawling. That is a question I can't answer, replied Gilson, with the cloud still upon his rather well-favoured countenance. I wish I could. It would be something to know the quarter from which the blow is to come. My eye and Betty Martin! exclaimed a voice at the sound of which Gilson started perceptibly. Still my eyes behold, Walter Gilson, and like a gentleman, I declare. Both the young men turned instantly towards the half-open doors of the Georgian dragon whence the voice proceeded, and beheld, Gilson with ill-concealed fear and openly expressed disgust, Dawling with mingled curiosity and surprise, a shabbily dressed and dissipated-looking man, a few years the senior of both. Bless my stars, how proud we are getting! exclaimed the shabby man, stepping into the street. Makes believe he don't know me! is old pal Miles Delaney. Oh, Delaney! said Gilson, as if he had not recognised him, and in an unmistakable tone of coldness and dislike. So you have come back to the old city, he added, on finding that the fellow was unwilling to accept the cut. Yes! returned Delaney. I am a rolling-stone, you know. And you seem to be another instance of the proverb, observed Gilson. Well, we can't all be as lucky as you have been, Walter Gilson! returned Delaney. And you didn't seem likely to stand in the shoes you do now when I last saw you, at the Guild Hall, you know. But you got out of that mess very tidily. And now the first one I ask about when I come back to Canterbury is you. How's young Gilson are getting on, says I. And says Andrew Jobson, why he's going up to the top, going to marry Rose Barton and have all the old man's tin, and die mayor of Canterbury. I don't feel at all flattered by your interest in me, Delaney, said Gilson, with a displeased look. Well, well! ejaculated Delaney with an aggrieved air. It's the way of the world. When a fellow is down, kick him. But you'll stand a quart of ale and give me a eight-meter film of pipe, won't you, Walter? Gilson, wishing to be rid of the fellow, put a shilling in his hand and passed on. On his return to his uncle's house, a note was given him by the servant, which she said had been left by a shabby-looking man with red whiskers, and which contained only the following brief communication, written upon dirty paper in an almost illegible scroll. I want to see you very particular. I didn't like to say what I got to say, a four-young doling. Come to the cloisters after dark. It's about the check you was add up to the guild all about. There was no signature, but its tenor left no doubt in his mind of its having been written by Miles Delaney, with whose not very pre-possessing personal appearance that of the bearer corresponded. He became a shade paler as he read the last sentence, but the soft silvery tones of his cousin's voice reached his ear from the passage, and crushing the note in his hand he thrusted into his pocket. There was a cloud upon his brow when he left the house that evening, just as the oil lamps in the high street were being lighted, and proceeded towards the cathedral. A stern resolve shone in his dark eyes, and his lips were compressed, the entire expression of his countenance indicating that with the utmost unwillingness to hold any intercourse with Delaney he felt constrained to meet him, and that while he apprehended evil he was resolved not to attempt to avert it by any dishonourable concession. Nine o'clock sounded from one grey old tower after another as he entered the cloisters, which he walked round twice, the first time quickly, the second more slowly, without meeting Delaney or anyone else. Three quarters of an hour elapsed before he left the cloisters, hurrying with long strides towards the green court with a dark flush upon his brow, his nostrils dilated, and his lips quivering as with unwonted excitement. As he reached the gloomy covered passage leading into the brick walk he stopped suddenly, gazing into the obscurity before him with widely dilated eyes. Just within the passage known as the dark entry he could dimly discern the shadowy outlines of a female figure, clad in a fashion which had been obsolete for a couple of centuries, standing motionless with the head bent down, the arms drooping the hands clasped before. For a few moments Walter Gilson stood as motionless as the figure, then he advanced a pace or two and gazed again. The figure moved not, and seemed unaware of his presence. A strange awe crept over him, and his feet seemed rooted to the broad flagstones on which he stood. Once or twice he strove to address the apparition, but his tongue seemed to be glued to his mouth. "'Who are you?' he at length contrived to articulate, but his voice sounded strange even to himself. There was no response. The head remained bowed, the arms straight and rigid the white fingers clasped. "'Speak!' he exclaimed. Not a sound came from the pale lips. Not the slightest movement could be discerned, but the outlines of the figure began to grow more indistinct, and in a few moments it had faded to just a perceptible luminousness which could be described only as a white shadow. This too faded out, and only darkness filled the space where it had been. With a face as pale as that of the figure which had vanished, with every nerve trembling and a cold perspiration distilling from every paw, Walter Gilson crept past the spot on which the apparition had stood, not without the awe-inspiring apprehension that it might reappear in close contiguity to him, and then hurried into the brick walk. "'Walter!' exclaimed Rose Barton, regarding him on his entrance, with an expression of mingled solicitude and surprise. "'How pale you are! Are you ill? What has happened?' "'Nothing, dear!' he replied, impressing a kiss upon her fair cheek. And I am not ill, but I have been walking fast, and I met Miles Delaney, and he was insolent, and it has excited me a little.' He said nothing about the apparition, because there was a superstition connected with it which made him unwilling to alarm her by associating it with himself. There was a tradition more than two hundred years old that the ghost said to haunt the dark entry had been the cook of a priest who lived in the house close to which it always appeared, and that she had poisoned her master and a lady and been buried alive beneath a flagstone of the pavement. Her ghost, it was said, had haunted the spot ever since, and who ever saw it was doomed to die within the year. The story obtained almost universal credence in the city, and though Walter Gilson had been bold enough to thread the dark entry that night he had been oblivious until he was close to it that it was the night, Friday, on which alone the ghost had ever been seen. When he retired to his chamber that night he shuddered at the recollection of what he had seen, and tried to remember all the persons whom he had ever heard of as having encountered the ghost and what had become of them. There was old Tom Pentecost the Smith, but he was drunk when he saw it, and he had lived years afterwards. And young Joe Horsenale, who saw a ghost in every shifting light, and Patti Fairbrass, who had probably invented the story as an excuse for loitering in the precinct with her sweetheart, and these were both living still, and it was certainly more than a year since they met Nell Cook. So Walter gradually reasoned himself into a state of mental composure, and fell asleep. On the following morning all canterbury was thrown into an unwonted state of excitement by the discovery of a man lying dead in the brick walk in a puddle of blood, which had flowed from a wound in the left side, evidently inflicted by the blood-stained clasp knife which was lying open about a yard from the corpse. The ghastly object was carried to the dead-house, and the head constable took possession of the knife and gave notice to the coroner. The murdered man, for that murdered he had been there was no doubt, was identified as Miles Delaney, an idle, disloot young man who had lost character, employment, and friends years before, and had then left the city and gone no one knew wither. Old persons had seen him in Canterbury during the twelve hours preceding midnight of the day before the corpse was found in the brick walk, and the constables became quietly busy in endeavouring to ascertain who was the last person in whose company he had been seen. Jenny, the girl who had delivered Delaney's scrawl to Walter Gilson, heard the description of the murdered man, and all the neighbours knew soon afterwards that such a man had brought to the house a letter for Mr Barton's nephew. This was not long in reaching the ears of the head constable, and Walter received notice to attend the inquest. Being asked if he knew a man named Miles Delaney, he replied in the affirmative, and to the further question whether he had seen him on the day preceding the discovery of the murder, he answered that he had met him in the High Street in the afternoon, and that he had seen him again between nine and ten that night in the Cloisters. What took you to the Cloisters? inquired the coroner, regarding him very intently. I had received a note from Delaney asking me to meet him there after dark, he replied. Have you that note about you? the coroner inquired. Walter hesitated for a moment, both because he could not remember on the instant what he had done with the note, and because he felt a natural unwillingness to have it read, and his countenance reddened as he produced the crumpled note from his pocket, smoothed it out, and gave it to the usher to hand to the coroner. You say you met the deceased in the Cloisters between nine and ten, said that official, when he had read and re-read the scroll very attentively. Can't you tell us the time more nearly than that? The clocks were striking nine when I entered the Cloisters, but I waited there some time before Delaney came. Walter replied. What time did you part? It must have been on the stroke of ten, replied Walter, after a few moments' reflection. Where did you leave the deceased in the Cloisters? I will not ask you what was the nature of your conversation, but there is one question I must ask you. Did you quarrel? Some angry words passed between us before we parted. Walter replied. He tried to extort money from me, and threatened me, and I told him he might do his worst, but should have nothing. And then the coroner paused, as if he wished the witness to say more. Then I left him. Show the witness the knife, said the coroner, and then the clasp-knife with which the crime had been committed was handed to Walter by a constable. Do you recognise it? He asked, as the young man examined it with an air of interest. It is like my own, and has the same initials engraved upon it, said Walter. It is your own, is it not? Mine!" exclaimed Walter, with a start. Is it possible that you suspect me of this foul crime? My own knife is in my pocket. His heart stood still for a moment, and his colour came and went in rapid alternations, as he vainly searched his pockets for his knife. It was gone. It was in vain that he tried to remember where he had left it. I have no more questions to ask you," said the coroner, and he fell back bewildered by the incident of the knife among the eagerly listening auditors. No one else had seen Delaney or been in or near the cloisters after nine o'clock, and the investigation soon came to an end. The coroner summed up the evidence briefly, dwelling particularly upon the incident of the knife, and upon the admission of Walter Gilson that there had been a quarrel between the deceased and himself before they parted, and against that young man the jury returned a verdict of willful murder. He was removed at once to Maidstone Jail, protesting his innocence, and sorrowing more for the grief and anxiety of Rose Barton than for himself, having no doubt that Providence would make his innocence manifest on his trial. Rose wept, but declared her firm assurance that he could not be guilty of so foul a crime. Her father expressed the same belief, but was far less confident than Walter or herself that the result of the trial would disprove the conclusion of the coroner's jury. Friends and neighbours merely shook their heads and said they could not have believed it. There was no new evidence offered on the trial. The prisoner had wracked his memory in vain to remember where he had last used his knife, which had been searched for in every nook and corner of his uncle's premises without being found. He was prepared, therefore, for the verdict of guilty, and for the dread sentence which followed. I have only to say that I am innocent of this man's death, and to express my confidence that the Almighty will, at some time or other, make my innocence manifest to the world, he had said, when asked whether he had ought to say in a rest of judgment. How shall I find words that would adequately express the anguish of poor Rose Barton? Like the Greek sculptor who found himself unable to represent to his satisfaction the grief of Agamemnon I must draw over it a veil. Three days after his conviction Walter Gilson was hanged. Rose Barton shared no tear, but she secluded herself in her chamber where she spent the day in prayer, and when she left it she was pale but calm and resigned. From that day she was never seemed to smile, until—but to name the occasion would be to anticipate the sequel of my story. Lovely still, though pale and grave, she had many offers of marriage during the slow years that followed the great trouble of her young life, but she declined them all. Secluding herself in a great measure from society she seldom left her home, but when she did her chosen walk was nearly always the precinct of the cathedral. One evening in autumn, several years after the execution of her lover, she was walking in the cloisters when she heard a sharp and sudden cry from the direction of the brick walk, and as if rung from the human breast by fear or pain of no ordinary degree. During that way immediately she found a man, tolerably well dressed, lying upon the walk as if in a fit. His cry had brought to the door of the house beside the dark entry a matronly-looking woman, who, on discovering the cause of the alarm, procured a jug of water, and dashed some of the cold fluid upon the man's face. DOOMED! DOOMED! he muttered, when the power of utterance returned but without thorough consciousness of the situation. Where do you live? asked the cannon's housekeeper in a kindly tone, while Rose Barton silently watched his countenance and waited for his answer. Is it gone? he asked, opening his eyes, and looking around him with a scared expression upon his pallid countenance. The ghost? it couldn't be his, for it was a woman. Lord, save us, he has seen Nell Cook! exclaimed the elder woman. His! said Rose. Hi, Mars Delaney's! returned the stranger, shuddering as he raised himself to a sitting posture and again gazed around him. What do you know of Mars Delaney? inquired Rose, with difficulty repressing a burst of emotion. He glanced at her for a moment without speaking, and then rose to his feet, his mind was gradually recovering its balance. I thought I saw a ghost, said he. It was a foolish idea, but I have been ill, and am not quite myself. Thank you, I am all right now. I shall not go until you have said what you know about Delaney!" exclaimed Rose, endeavouring to detain him. The man immediately took to his heels, followed by Rose, crying, Stop him! But he had not run far, when, not having quite recovered from the recent shock to his nerves, he staggered and fell. A clergyman came from one house and a foot-boy from another, a constable was sent for, and the stranger, finding that he could not escape, became sullenly passive. I charge him with the murder of Mars Delaney, I, and with the murder of Walter Gilson, too, said Rose, on the appearance of the constable. Upon what evidence? the constable asked. God, who has given him up to justice, will give the evidence for his conviction, rejoined Rose impressively. Take him, said the clergyman, solemnly. I believe the young lady is right. The stranger passively accompanied the constable to the jail, where he was placed in a cell, seeming to be dazed by the suddenness and strangeness of the situation. He had not been there more than an hour when he expressed a wish to see the governor. I wish to make a statement, said he, with the air of a man oppressed by the consciousness of heavy guilt. It was I who murdered Mars Delaney, for which crime a young man of this city was hanged some years ago. I had an old grudge against him, and watched him into the cloisters. As I found afterwards, he had just been quarrelling with Gilson, and he was very savage, I did not mean to kill him. My idea was to get on the track of something that would enable me to hand him over to the law, but he taunted me so that I was provoked into striking him. Then he caught me by the throat, and I thought I should be strangled, so I whipped out my knife, opened it with my teeth, and let him have it between his ribs. Where did you get that knife? The governor of the jail asked. The initials on the haft were not yours. I found it, replied the self-confessed murderer. Then it may have been Gilson's after all, observed the governor. Poor fellow. There was no more to be said. The prisoner signed his confession and the governor withdrew. When the jailer visited the stranger's cell in the morning, he found him hanging from a bar of the grated window, and quite dead. Then it was that Rose Barton, on hearing of his confession, smiled once more. And raising her blue eyes heavenward, murmured, The Lord has heard my prayer, and lifted the cloud from the name of the innocent. CHAPTER X Rising early on the following morning, the curate and I walked down to the beach, where we found upon the shingle a wounded and disabled seagull, several of whose kind were skimming the sea, and ever and anon dipping the tips of their wings into the pea-green waves. The fierceness of the wounded bird, which prompted it to snap at the curate stick, prevented anything being done for its relief, if indeed anything could have been done, one of its wings being broken, so that we were constrained to place it in a sheltered position among the black piles of the jetty, and leave it where it was at least concealed from beach-boys and cockney excursionists of stone-throwing propensities. Having got up formidable appetites during a walk along the beach overhung by the east cliff, where enormous masses of chalk attest the ravages of the abrading forces of nature upon the face of the towering precipice, we rejoined our friend at the breakfast table. That important meal disposed of in a satisfactory manner, we all ascended the castled height, and saw the deep well that supplies the garrison with water, the remains of the Roman faros from which soldiers were carrying coal in baskets, Wellington's bedroom remarkable for nothing but its Spartan-like absence of the remotest indication of luxury, but nothing that pleased me so much as the fine panorama presented by the old town lying below us, dimly seen through a grey veil of mist, the green ridge of the opposite heights rising above it, the furrowed expanse of greyish-green sea on the left bounded at one point of the horizon by the thin white line of cliff between Calais and Beloyne, and the varied view inland on the right, where the greens faded into blues as the eye gazed farther northward, with a grey church tower or spire rising here and there from embosoming woods. There was not much in the way of Dickensian Notabilia to look up in Dover, but we saw the house in Candon Crescent where the novelists stayed in 1852 from July to October, and the building in which he gave one of his popular readings in 1861, concerning which he wrote to Mrs. Alfred Dickens, his brother's widow, who was then staying at Gadshill Place. At Dover they wouldn't go, but sad of plauding like mad. The most delicate audience I have seen in any provincial place is Canterbury, but the audience with the greatest sense of humour certainly is Dover. In the afternoon we visited the ruins of St. Martin's Priory, a venerable and moss-grown remnant of the early part of the 12th century. One of the gateways was almost entire, but time had made wreck and ruin of every other portion of the building. Succeeding generations have little respect for the works of their ancestors which have ceased to serve the purposes of their foundation. In the morning we had seen an undoubted relic of the Roman occupation used as a coal-house. Here we saw a proportion of a monastic edifice of the Anglo-Norman period converted into a cart shed. The curate was grieved by the condition in which we found the ruins, but has since been comforted by the restoration of the refectory which is now used as a schoolroom. My friends and I parted company in the evening, and I started alone for deal, they accompanying me about a mile on the way over the East Cliff. My original intention had been to walk along the beach, but I was warned that I might experience some difficulty in rounding the South Forland from the springs of fresh water which there gush up through the shingle, and I knew by experience that the shingle beaches of this part of the coast are very unpleasant to walk upon. This route is, moreover, only practicable at low water, and as the cliffs are in some places four hundred feet high, it is not altogether free from danger. Passing on the right a signal house, and then the lighthouse on the summit of the South Forland, I presently reached the little village of St. Margaret's, perched on the green eminence above that lofty and almost perpendicular promontory. There the picturesque little Norman church attracted my attention for a while, and then I tramped on again over the cliffs, the way gradually sloping downward towards the North. For more than half an hour the only building which I passed was an old signal house on the cliff, and the only living creatures that I saw were the white winged gulls which circled and screamed, now above the cliff, now below its edge, and then skimming the waves, and some Sussex cows who were quietly ruminating or cropping the short grass. It was growing dusk when I reached the Hamlet of Kingsdown, where the long wall of chalk sinks into the shingle, and struck into a footpath across the fields to the village of Warmer. About twenty minutes walking from that place took me to Deal, where I lighted my pipe at the white horse and smoked it on the jetty, looking across the downs at the many lights that shone there like marine glow worms, and thinking of the many tales of shipwreck and disaster associated with the long ridge of sand, where oft by mariners is shown, unless the men of Kent Elias, Earl Godwin's castle overthrown, and palace roofs and churches spires. The legend which connects Earl Godwin with these sands is that they were formerly a beautiful island on which that powerful noble had a palatial mansion. One night, as the story runs, the strong east wind which had been blowing during the day rose to a fearful gale, and the sea ran so high that the waves broke over the coast like a cataract to the dismay of the inhabitants of Deal and Sandwich, whose homes they invaded and wrecked. For several days the storm continued with unabated fury, and the waves cast upon the beach piles of timber, broken furniture, trees torn up by the roots, and other indications of a terrible catastrophe. Nothing could be seen seaward but the wild waves and the storm-driven masses of cloud, and it was thought that the darkness caused by the intervention of the black storm-cloud and the torrents of rain that were falling obscured Godwin's island from view. But when the storm at length abated the island had disappeared, and the sole vestige of its existence was a strip of sand which became visible at low water. Sir Charles Lyle, having found a stratum of blue clay at the depth of fifteen feet below the surface of the sand, thought that there might once have been an island where the Goodwin's sand now stretches, and that it might have been swept away by the great storm of 1099, recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The sands do not appear to have attracted much attention, however, until the reign of Henry VIII, when the silting up of Sandwich Harbour by the accumulation of sand caused Sir Thomas Moore to be appointed a special commissioner for the investigation of the cause. Thither, says Bishop Latimer, in one of his quaint sermons, dither cometh Master Moore and calleth the country before him, such as were thought to be men of experience, and men that could of likelihood best certify him of that matter concerning the stopping of Sandwich Haven. Among others came in before him an old man with a white head, and one that was thought to be little less than a hundred years old. When Master Moore saw this aged man, he thought it expedient to hear him say his mind in this matter. For, being so older man, it was likely that he knew most of any man in that presence and company. So Master Moore called this old aged man unto him, and said, Father, tell me if ye can, what is the cause of this great rising of the sands and shelves here about this Haven, the which stop it up, so that no ships can arrive here? Ye are the oldest man that we can aspire in all this company, so that if any man can tell any cause of it, ye of likelihood can say most of it, or at least wise, more than any man here assembled. Ye for Seuss good Master, quotes this old man, for I am nigh a hundred years old, and no man here in this company near unto my age. Well, then, quotes Master Moore, how say ye in this matter? What think ye to be the cause of these shelves and flats that stop up Sandwich Haven? For Seuss, sir, quotes he, I am an old man, and I may remember the building of Tenderdon Steeple, and I may remember when there was no Steeple at all there. And before that Tenderdon Steeple was in building, there was no manner of speaking of any flats or sands that stop the Haven, and therefore I think that Tenderdon Steeple is the cause of the destroying and decay of Sandwich Haven. And so to my purpose, preaching of God's word is the cause of rebellion, as Tenderdon Steeple was the cause that Sandwich Haven is decayed. The old man's theory that Tenderdon Steeple was the cause of the accumulation of sand along this part of the coast has been thought by some to have been not altogether groundless, though the manner in which he set it forth made it seem so extravagant and far fetched that it has become a proverbial illustration of the inscription of effects to the wrong causes. The tower of Tenderdon Church was built in the reign of Henry VI. The funds for the purpose being obtained, it is said, by diverting from their proper purposes certain revenues which had been appropriated to the maintenance of a sea wall, the decay of which in consequence caused the sand to accumulate until it prevented vessels from reaching Sandwich. In the saying which then arose that Tenderdon Steeple was the cause of the Goodwin Sand, there seems, however, to be a confounding of that shoal with the Sandwich Flats, through which runs the Channel of the River Star, by which Sandwich is approached from the sea. Deal, though it has something of the aspect of an old town, has grown up in comparatively modern times, from the contiguity of the Downes and the concourse of vessels there. The original village of Deal is that now called Upper Deal, about a mile inland, where is the parish church containing some fragments of Norman architecture. Braley says that a house on the west side of Lower Street, then the farthest from the sea, was described in a deed dated 1624 as A Butting on the Seabank, and in a chanceary suit tried forty years later, a witness, seventy-two years of age, stated that he knew the site of Lower Deal before a single house was built there. Deal is the scene in part of the strange narrative of Ambrose Gwinnett, who is said to have been hanged and gibbeted, and to have been removed alive from the gibbet, and afterwards to have lived many years, and encountered adventures and vicissitudes which might convince us that truth is stranger than fiction, if we could be sure that the story is not itself a fiction. I read the narrative when a very small boy, and have since seen a copy of the first edition, which, in the catalogue of the British Museum Library, bears the conjectural date of 1731. There is no date on the title page of the book, which is in pamphlet form, and has an engraved frontispiece representing two of the most striking scenes of the hero's strange story. It is written in the first person, and purports to be the life and strange adventures and voyages of Ambrose Gwinnett, well known in London as the lame beggar who swept the crossing at the Muse Gate at Charing Cross. The narrator tells us that he was born in Canterbury, and articleed to an attorney there, and in 1709, being then in his twenty-second year, he left home to visit a married sister who lived three miles beyond deal. On reaching that place, however, he was so much fatigued that he lodged for the night at a public house near the beach, intending to reach his brother-in-law's house in time for breakfast. In the same room slept a man named Collins. During the night, Gwinnett had occasion to go downstairs, and having some difficulty in opening a door, forced up the latch with the blade of a clasp-knife, which he afterwards dropped, and was unable in the darkness to find. In the morning Collins was missing, the sheets of his bed were stained with blood, and similar suggestions of violence were traced from the chamber to the yard, where Gwinnett's knife was found. The latter was there upon accused of having murdered his fellow lodger, whose corpse he was supposed to have thrown into the sea. He was taken before a magistrate, committed to the county jail, tried and convicted at the next to sizes, and sentenced to be hanged, which in those days involved the subsequent exposure of the corpse upon a jibbit. The first part of the sentence was executed at deal, before the public house in which the murder was alleged to have been committed. But owing to a violent storm with torrents of rain, he was removed prematurely from the gallows, placed in a cart, and driven rapidly to the village in which his sister lived, probably ring-walled if there is any truth in the story, and there suspended in irons from a jibbit which had been erected on a piece of wasteland, on which his brother-in-law's cows were grazing. He had been insensible from the moment when the noose tightened about his throat, but after the hangman and his assistant had driven away from the jibbit he revived, his neck having escaped dislocation, and suffocation having been prevented by the hasty manner in which, owing to the storm, the sentence of the law had been imperfectly executed. In the evening a boy who came to the spot to drive home the cows discovered that he was alive, and no time was lost by his relatives and their friends in removing him from the jibbit and taking measures for his complete resuscitation. Fearing to remain in England he volunteered aboard a privateer, which was captured by a Spanish cruiser and taken to Havana. There he remained in prison three years, and by a strange coincidence met the man whom he was supposed to have murdered. Collins had been bled the day before his supposed murder, and at night during the absence of Gwinnett from the chamber he found that the bandage had slipped from his arm, from which the blood was again flowing. He rose immediately and was crossing the street to the house of the barber by whom the operation had been performed, when he was seized by a press gang and taken aboard a vessel lying in the Downs. He and Gwinnett left Havana in company but parted on the voyage, and the latter, after many adventures and vicissitudes including captivity in Algeria, returned to England in 1730. The story, though told very circumstantially and with an air of truth, is so improbable in its chief incidents that it may fairly be doubted whether it is anything more than a successful example of the art in which Defoe excelled, of forging the handwriting of nature. It is inconceivable that in the last century a jury could convict an accused person of murder when there was no proof that the crime had been committed. That we should look in vain for evidence of the story in the newspapers of the period is less surprising than evidence of such a conviction would be. For little provincial intelligence appeared in the columns of London newspapers a century and a half ago, and Kentish journals were not yet in existence. But besides the difficulty which most minds must experience in believing that a man can have been convicted of murdering a person who, for any evidence to the contrary, was living, it must be regarded as a circumstance not in favour of the authenticity of the story that the narrator mentions neither the sign of the house in deal at which he lodged, nor the name of the village in which his sister lived, and as another that he should have returned to England without any evidence of his innocence of the crime of which he had been convicted and the penalty of which still hung over his head. To me it seems far less probable that the story should be true than that it should have been concocted as a literary speculation by a writer tolerably skilled in the art of making fiction seem like truth. Though written in the form of an autobiography it is attributed by the compilers of the British Museum catalogue to Isaac Bickerstaff, upon what authority is known only to the gentlemen who perform that very useful work. What Isaac Bickerstaff is this? Biographical dictionaries mention only one author of that name, the lyric dramatist, who, having been born four years subsequently to the date given in the museum catalogue as that of the publication of the story of Ambrose Gwinnett, cannot have been the author of that strange production. The only other Isaac Bickerstaff mentioned in the records of literary enterprise is usually regarded as an unreal person invented by Swift, whose creation is said to have afterwards been availed of by steel for a like purpose. Mr Robert Chambers, writing about the Tatler, says that, quote, at first the author endeavoured to conceal himself under the fictitious name of Isaac Bickerstaff, which he borrowed from a pamphlet by Swift, end quote. The brochure referred to is Predictions for the Year 1708 by Isaac Bickerstaff, his choir. But how did it happen that both Swift and Steel, writing within a year, used the same nom de plume? Is it certain that there was not a real Isaac Bickerstaff, who might have been concerned in the literary speculations of both authors? May not the author of Ambrose Gwinnett have been a son of the author of Love in a Village? However this may have been, it is certain that the latter cannot have been the author of the former work, and nearly is certain that there must have been another writer of that name whom literary research has failed to discover. He was probably a grub street hack, who would write the story for a guinea, or, for the same honorarium, produce a pamphlet to be published with the name of some peer or MP on the title page. And he may have lent his name to Swift and Steel for some such consideration, and allowed them afterwards to treat him as a non-existent person, as much a being of Steel's creation as Nestor Ironside. If it be asked why Steel should have borrowed Bickerstaff's name, if there really was such a person, when he might have written anonymously or with a fictitious name, the obvious answer is that either Steel or Swift, if not both, did do so, and that speculation as to the motive would, at this date, be vain. It is possible, of course, that Steel was unaware of Bickerstaff's existence, and borrowed the name from the title page of Swift's pamphlet, as stated by Mr. Robert Chambers and others, but it is much more probable that Bickerstaff was known to Steel than that being known to Swift he should have been unknown to the former, who, besides being a lounger about town and a frequenter of the coffee-houses, was at that time on terms of intimacy with Swift. I thought of the strange story of the deal of a century and a half ago, the deal of the smugglers and the preventive servicemen, the press gangs and the privateers, as I turned up from the beach, and wondered which of the older public houses, if either, had been the scene of the supposed murder and of Gwynnit's semi-execution. Was it the North Star, or the deal cutter, or the rose and crown, or the three compasses? I could not decide. I know it was the custom in those days to execute murderers on the scene of their crime, but I could not imagine an execution in one of those narrow streets. The gallows could not have been set up on the beach, for we are told that it was opposite the public house, opposite to which was also the barber's shop, to which Collins was bound when he encountered the press gang. I gave it up. Fortified for a day's walking by a substantial breakfast at the clean and comfortable hostelry of the white horse, therein following the much-to-be-commended example of Captain Dougal's Dalghetti, I started for Ramsgate about nine o'clock on the following morning, intending to break the journey at Sandwich. Leaving the clean and quiet little town at the northern extremity of the Esplanade, and passing wavewashed Sandown Castle on the right, I struck into an ill-defined track across the dunes or sandhills which I had followed to Sandwich on a former visit to several years previously. This devious and solitary track where nothing is heard but the tinkle of sheep bells after the rambler, as it recedes from the beach, ceases to hear the monotonous and melancholy sweep of the sea upon the shingle. Meanders between the coast and the highway from Deal to Sandwich, a distance of six miles, over an undulating tract of sand, precisely similar to that of the beach, and only prevented from drifting away by the sparse herbage that covers it. I could not avoid the reflection, as I followed the track across this sandy waste, that the Goodwin sands only required to become elevated a few feet higher to present a perfectly similar appearance. There seems no reason why those famous sands which have been upheaved within the last four centuries should not some day become a sheep pasture and a rabbit warren like these neighbouring sand hills. The path winds in a devious manner between the sandy hillocks and ridges, which, with the little hollows between them, are scantily clothed with a coarse grass, with here and there a patch of a low-growing shrub, the roots of which serve in some degree to hold together the loose soil. Some of these hollows are deep enough to prevent the rambler from seeing beyond the hillocks between which he is threading his way, and even on the less broken portions of the desolate tract nothing else meets the eye on either hand except the two black sheds on the right, each covering a gun, and constituting what are called battery number one and battery number two. Kentish sheep, somewhat longer legged than the Southdown breed, and differing from them in having white faces are scattered over the waste, and wild rabbits, hundreds of whose burrows may be seen scamper in and out among the hillocks and hollows. About half way between deal and sandwich the rambler comes upon what looks like an ordinary milestone standing on the left of the track most frequently used. Milestones are not placed on footpaths, however, and the singularity prompts a glance at the face of the stone, an inscription on which informs the Wayfarer that there, one evening towards the close of the last century, Mary Bax was outraged and murdered by Martin Lander, a soldier of the German legion, who suffered the penalty of death for the crime at Maidstone. The unfortunate young woman whose lifeblood was shared on this lonely spot was a dressmaker at deal, and on the evening of the crime was returning to that town from sandwich. Failing to reach her home, her father sought her by the way she was expected to come, which is shorter than the high road, and was horrified by the discovery of her corpse, dabbled with blood, lying upon the path at the spot now marked by this rude monument. Suspicion fell upon the soldier, who by a long train of circumstantial evidence was convicted of the crime, for which he suffered the extreme penalty of the law as the inscription on the stone records. The path across the sandhills is continued through fields and market gardens to a lane parallel to the star, on reaching which the rambler turns to the left and soon finds himself in the quaint old town of sandwich. The ancient churches, crooked streets, and high steep gables of which must look nearly the same as they did a century or two ago. As I intended to devote a portion of the day to a visit to the ruins of Richborough, I made no longer stay in the town, however, than was required for drinking a glass of ale and walking through the irregular streets in the direction of the road leading to Canterbury. I had been desirous to explore these ruins on a former occasion, when I had walked from Ramsgate to Deale. But though visible from the road they cannot be reached from it without a boat owing to the intervention of the star, which flows in such a remarkable curve as to convert into a peninsula the tract intersected by the road between Sandwich and the original Haven, where the river flows into Pegwell Bay. Just out of the town, on the road to Canterbury, there is a lane on the right, which, passing under the railway from Minster Junction to Sandwich and Deale, enables the ruins to be reached on their western side and then intersects the marshes bordering the river. Those aloneness of the remaining portion of the wall overlooking the star causes these ruins to appear almost too inconsiderable for notice. They have a peculiar interest for students of history and persons archaeologically disposed, as the most ancient remains of the kind in the kingdom. Richborough, under its ancient name of Rutupia, is supposed to have been the first military station established by the Romans in this country, and though archaeological authorities differ very much as to the site of Rutupia, which Ptolemy calls one of three principal cities of the Cantiae, there is no doubt of its extreme antiquity. The remains of the ancient castle cover about six acres and occupy a slight elevation above the surrounding country, which presents a dead level from the Sandwich Flat to Ash Marsh. The walls are ten or eleven feet thick, but the portions which remain are in most places of inconsiderable height, little more than the foundations being visible at some points, and the crumbling masonry rising in others to the height of six or eight feet only. The greatest elevation is on the north, where the wall rises to twenty-two feet. The ruins are covered everywhere with ivy, but where the masonry can be seen layers of Roman bricks can be seen between the courses of rough stone. Some remains of a Roman amphitheatre are said to have been visible fifty years ago in the fields, about five hundred yards southwest from the ruins of the castle, but they no longer exist and the plough has obliterated every trace of them. Camden states that the streets of a town could be traced in his time in the neighbouring fields, but green pastures and brown arable land, over which corn waves in the summer now cover all of Richborough that is not enclosed with the crumbling and ivy-mantled walls of the ruined castle. The site appears to have been deserted by the sea, which at one time washed its walls during the fifth century, sandwich not being mentioned in old records until a century later. Retracing my steps along the lane, my attention was arrested when near sandwich by an old house standing back from the road and partially covered with ivy. Though apparently occupied, it had a somber and neglected aspect, the stone steps before the front door being green and seeming to be encrusted in places with moss, while grass grew in the gravel paths and docks and thistles flourished among the tangled shrubs and degenerated flowers. As I looked, a feeling grew in my mind that I had seen the house before, though I knew that I had never seen the place until that day. As I walked into the town and while dining at an inn on the left-hand side of the main street from the marketplace to the Strandgate, I strove to remember where I had seen a house like the one which had so impressed me with its melancholy and neglected aspect. It was not until I was again upon the road, however, that I remembered having seen such a house in a remarkable dream which I have here cast into the form of a story without the addition or alteration of a single incident. A night in a haunted house the afterglow of a vivid sunset was tinging the summer clouds with the richest rose hues and giving a rubescent tinge and luster to the westward windows of distant farmhouses and cottages as I tramped along a picturesque bit of road such as there are many off in Kent and Surrey, which wind in and out and up and down among the hills with oaks and beaches overhanging them with honeysuckle and wild rose perfuming the air and ferns and foxglove growing upon the banks. I was descending a rather steep hill through the hollow at the bottom of which a splashing stream was crossed by a narrow bridge when a curve of the road brought into view on the right an old ivy-clad house standing back among older trees by which it was partially concealed from view. Had the night been farther advanced and lights been gleaming through the closed curtains and blinds it would have been simply picturesque but seen through the semi-obscurity which the surrounding trees made of the twilight it had a somber and neglected aspect the stone steps before the front door being green and seeming to be partially encrusted with moss while grass grew in the gravel paths and docks and thistles flourished among the tangled shrubs and degenerated flowers of a long untended garden. The house looked as if it had been given up to decay and the ground surrounding it as if they had reverted to nature for more than a generation. Weaving a web of fancy about the old house in which a ghost and a chancery suit mingled I descended the hill crossed the little bridge at the bottom and found on one side of the road a finger post and on the other a low-roofed hostelry with a sign post and a horse trough before it. Having ascertained that I could be accommodated with a bed and breakfast I ordered some refreshment and sat down in the sanded parlour around the smoke darkened walls of which old prints in black frames alternated with stuffed owls and hawks, jays, cuckoos and squirrels. Does anyone live in the old house up the hill? I inquired of my hostess when she brought in the refreshment I had ordered. No, sir! she replied. There hasn't been anyone living there for many a year. What is the reason for its being allowed to be in that neglected condition? I asked. Well, it is a strange story what they tell about it. The woman returned with evident hesitation. Nobody knows the rights on, for it has been like that as you see it now longer than anybody in the neighbourhood can remember. Haunted, I suppose, I said with a smile. Well, they do say that strange things have been seen and heard by them as have passed the place late at night, replied the woman. But it weren't for that that the place was shut up and deserted if there's any truth in the story that is told about it. What is the story, I inquired, with a feeling of interest which was increased by the little I had already heard. It is a wild and improbable story, sir, said my hostess, hesitating to begin for a few moments, and nobody knows now whether there is any truth in it, though why, if there isn't, the place should have been left to go to rack and ruin like that I can't imagine. As I heard the story when I was a girl, there was an old lady lived there ever so many years ago, who directed by her will that she shouldn't be buried, but left on the bed as she died, and that everything in the house should be left just as it was, and the house shut up for a hundred years. A hundred years, I exclaimed, my surprise and curiosity equally excited by that singular testamentary instruction. The story goes, continued my hostess, that she believed she should come to life again at the end of that time, and that was why she wouldn't be buried or even put in a coffin. And how long ago is that eccentric old lady supposed to have died, I inquired, more and more interested in the story. It must be nearly a hundred years now, replied the narrow-dress. It is nearly thirty years since I heard the story from a great aunt, who was then 970, and she had lived in this neighbourhood all her life, and said the house had been shut up, and that story told about it longer than she could remember. This strange story excited a desire to explore the old house, which grew stronger every moment that I sat there looking at the ancient prince and the stuffed animals through the wreaths of blue smoke that curled upward from the bowl of my pipe. When I retired to rest, I drew aside the curtain of my chamber window, and looked across the orchard towards the brow of the hill, where the haunted house was then scarcely distinguishable in the darkness from the trees which surrounded it. To my surprise, a light glimmered from an upper window, shining through the foliage like a star. What hand could have lighted it? If I had known that the hundred years during which the old lady's eccentric spirit had been separated from its mortal abode, terminated that night, I think I should have been sceptical as to her having just experienced her expected resurrection, and lighted a candle to see how the old place looked. But I had given no credence to the story, not being able to conceive the probability of any executors or trustees being insane enough to allow a house to be shut up with a corpse in it for a hundred years. Still, the appearance of a light at what for a secluded little hamlet was a late hour in an uninhabited house was more than a little remarkable. While I was wondering at it however, it disappeared, and the darkness without was only relieved by a few twinkling stars. I fell asleep while thinking of what I had heard and seen, and my first thought on waking when the gray light was stealing over the earth was of the haunted house on the hill. I resolved to visit it, and if I could obtain an entrance to satisfy myself of the truth of what I had heard from my hostess. I dressed at once, therefore, descended the stairs very quietly, and let myself out. Footnote. In the dream there was an abrupt shifting of the scene from the inn parlor to the interior of the haunted house, but as the time had changed from evening twilight to daylight or morning twilight the story requires the intervention of a night to be supposed. End of footnote. Crossing the bridge I ascended the hill and entered the neglected garden of the haunted house. A broken pane of glass afforded the means of opening a window in the rear of the house, and in another moment I had dropped into what seems to have been the dining-room. A cloud of dust was raised by the moving of the curtains, and the light which I let in by drawing them back showed a thick film of dust upon every object in the room. I stood still a few moments looking around upon the heavy old-fashioned furniture, which seemed in some degree to corroborate the story which I had heard at the inn. The carpet was worm-eaten, and every corner had its cobweb, or rather its half-dozen cobwebs, the different degrees in which dust had settled upon them marking their various periods of construction. Silence rained throughout the house as I listened at the foot of the stairs for a few moments before I began to ascend them. Why did I listen? What did I expect to hear in a house that had not had a human inhabitant for a century? I could find no answer to this query, yet the recollection of the light which I had seen on the preceding night had prepared my mind in some degree for a startling discovery. I ascended the stairs slowly and with furtive tread as if I feared to alarm a sleeping household. On the landing I paused. I had heard a sound, the first not caused by myself since I had been in the house. A rustling sound, but whether within or without I was uncertain. It might have been the trailing ivy flapping against a window in the gentle breeze. Two doors opened on this landing. One was closed, the other was opened about an inch. Advancing I knew not why with the same furtive tread that I had ascended the stairs I peered into the room. My eyes dilated widely and for a few moments my feet seemed rooted to the spot by what I saw. The narrow view just took in the head of a large, massive, old-fashioned bedstead upon which the outlines of a human figure could be discerned beneath a white covering. Was the strange story which I had heard at the inn a verity then? It seemed so. There was no sign of the presence of a living human being in the room. Dust hung upon the white curtains and lay thick upon the dressing-table and the wash-stand as I saw when I pushed the door open wide enough to enter and look around. As I did so I observed a movement of an arm of the figure beneath the counterpane which, to my surprise and horror, was immediately afterwards thrown back, disclosing the gray locks and wrinkled yellowish-white countenance of an old woman. Was I about to witness the resurrection of the eccentric old lady who had been dead a hundred years? Bewildered by an event so contraria-like to experience and belief, I stood speechless and motionless, awaiting the next stage of the marvellous resuscitation. I had not many moments to wait. The old woman's eyelids unclosed and a pair of cold gray eyes regarded me with an expression of surprise as she raised herself to a sitting position and put back the tangled gray locks from her wrinkled and parchment-like forehead with a hand that might have been a portion of the anatomy of an Egyptian mummy. I don't know whether I be a-doing wrong," said she, but I've slept in this house many a night when I've come this way and never saw a living soul in it before. Who are you? I asked, wonderingly, and yet with some perception of a ludicrous solution of the awful mystery dawning upon my mind. A poor old woman has sell threads and tapes, she rejoined. What's the time, master? I hurried from the room without replying and left the house as quickly as I could, scarcely knowing whether I was pleased or not with the farcical manner in which so sensational an adventure had terminated. The resemblance of the old house near Sandwich to the haunted mansion of my dream must, I suppose, be regarded as a simple coincidence. The story of an old woman who expected her resurrection a century after death had, however, long been known to me, though in a somewhat different form to that which it assumed in my dream. I frequently heard when a boy of a long-deceased old woman called Mother Hotwater, as the name used to be pronounced, who had at some period of the last century been the hostess of the George, an ancient inn at Croydon, and who was said to have predicted her resurrection a hundred years after her decease. The name of this old woman was probably Atwater, which may be found in the parish registers, and upon one of the tokens figured by Garrow and Steinman in their histories of the town. The conversion of A into O in proper names being a frequent occurrence in the records of the topographical nomenclature of Surrey. Croydon, having formerly been called Craydon, Dawking, Darking, and Tolworth, a hamlet of the parish of Longditten, Tolworth. The old woman seems to have been addicted to the practice of magic, or to have maintained what in Scotch superstition is called a brownie. For there is a tradition that there was a closet in the house into which the dirty plates and dishes used to be put, and from which they were brought out clean without human hands being concerned in the process. And it used to be a common saying of servants and work women in the town fifty years ago, I wish we had Mother Hotwater's closet. The George Inn stood at the corner of High Street and George Street, and is said to have had an ill repute in its latter years owing to the mysterious disappearance from time to time of peddlers and other travellers who were supposed to have lodged at the house and were never seen afterwards. The name of the house was preserved to a period within my own recollection in the adjacent George Yard, but the house is now and has been as long as I can remember called Albion House, and at the earliest date to which my memory extends was occupied by a draper named Stapleton, one of whose daughters informed a cousin of my own, daughter of the late John Skelton Chapman, then master of Archbishop Whitgift's school in that town, that there was a closet in the house, the door of which was nailed up, and which had never been opened within her recollection. A vague suspicion seems to have been entertained that this closet contained the skeletons of men who had been murdered in the house in the olden time. From this digression and the hostility of my dream let me return to the inn at Sandwich at which I dined, and from which I started an hour afterwards for Ramsgate. Leaving the ancient town by the stand gate and crossing the swivel bridge which there spans the star, looking like the drawbridge of some fortress of the feudal age, I proceeded northward over a broad flat, the scanty saltmarsh vegetation of which struggles for existence with deposits of cockleshells and wave-worn pebbles. The river was on my right and my left at the same time, on the former side flowing northward on the latter where it laved the ivy-clad walls of Richborough Castle running southward. Looking seaward I was surprised by the sight of a small steamer, apparently paddling over the marshes, the river not being visible, and its eccentric windings causing the vessel to appear where the presence of deep water would otherwise have been unsuspected. The steamer, as I afterwards learned, belonged to the owners of some neighbouring saltworks. That these flats were once covered by the sea is evident from the great difference of depth between the channel made by the current of the star and the adjoining waters of Pegwell Bay, the former being the arm of the sea which formerly separated Thanet from the mainland and into which the star then flowed at Starmouth. On both sides of this channel the water is so shallow that it may be waded across at low water when, indeed, scores of shrimpers may be seen immersed to their knees at long distances from the cliff on which the village of Pegwell is perched. Ignorance of the existence of this channel was the cause some years ago of a fatal and melancholy disaster. Two young men who attempted to wade across the bay as a short route from Deal to Ramsgate were plunged suddenly into deep water and being unable to swim were both drowned. If the facts were not attested by existing records it would be difficult to believe that Sandwich was once a great naval and commercial port and that Richborough Castle was formerly close to the sea. The records referred to show, however, that a broad channel once flowed from Reculver to Sandwich and that the mouth of the star was then at Starmouth about four miles and a half in a northwesterly direction from the point at which it now flows into Pegwell Bay. The breadth of this channel varied from a mile and a half to four miles with sufficient depth of water for the largest vessels of that early period when it was the accustomed route between London and the northern ports of France. The rising of the land and the consequent diminution of the breadth and depth of this channel were probably going on long before the change attracted much attention but they had become visible in beads time. The sea had receded between Deal and Ramsgate and the proprietors of the adjacent lands were taking measures to secure the flats from which it had retired from being again overflowed. By imperceptible degrees, century after century, the channel between Reculver and Starmouth became choked. The star was observed to be less rapid. A creek which ran up to Ebb's Fleet, which had been a convenient and much-used landing-place, became dry. And from that place to Sandwich, the star, which had usurped the place of the southern portion of the former channel, meandered sluggishly through a broad tract of marsh where once the sea had been. Near the solitary public house called the Sportsman, where a pleasantly shaded road descends on the left from the village of Minster, with the branches of old trees forming an arch of verdure, most refreshing to the eye after a long walk in the glare of the sun, I left the road and struck into a footpath through the fields on the right. Here the cliff begins to rise out of the shell-strewn flats, at first showing reddish clay, through which the chalk rises, however, before Pegwell is reached. Along the edge of this cliff the path runs until the coast-guard station at Pegwell is reached, where the shrimpers ascend from the beach by means of a vertical ladder constructed against the face of the cliff, and a bronze-visaged seaman paces the point monotonously, with a telescope under his arm. End of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 of In Kent with Charles Dickens This Librivox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Ruth Golding In Kent with Charles Dickens by Thomas Frost Chapter 12 On the following morning, after breakfasting at the old post-office in, in the high street of Ramsgate, where I had passed to-night, I walked down to the beach, with the intention of sauntering to broad stairs in the shade of the cliffs, as Dickens had done more than thirty years previously. I walked, he says, in a letter, on the sands at low water to Ramsgate, and sat upon them till flayed with cold. That was in September, when the air is sometimes very cold before noon and in the evening, and the wind and waves so rough that on one occasion I could scarcely stand up against the former on the east cliff at Dover, and the latter beat so fiercely against the jetty that the spray was blown over my head. On the present occasion the sun was shining brightly, and the air was pleasantly warm. Elderly gentlemen and stout ladies occupied the chairs on the sands, contemplatively watching the smoke of distant steamers. Young ladies were promenading in morning-dress, with their back hair let down to dry. Frolicksome girls and boys were riding donkeys, one of which seemed to be gravely amused by the little feminine screams which he contrived to extract from his rider by persistently walking close to the water-line reached by the tide. And younger children were busily constructing what looked like miniature earthworks and trenches in the sand. Dickens, though he visited this part of the coast every summer for fourteen or fifteen years, never chose Ramsgate for a resort, and seems to have visited it from broad stairs on only two occasions, one of which has been mentioned. Eight years later he again visited Ramsgate, but only for the purpose of seeing a circus entertainment, of which popular form of amusement he was very fond, though for a rider who appears to have seen so much of the manners and habits of strolling entertainers of every description, his knowledge of circus life was strangely limited. When the interesting story of the fortunes and misfortunes of the grad grinds and the boundaries appeared, the incidents in which various members of Sleary's circus company figure excited surprise equally among those who were conversant with circus life and those who knew nothing about it, the former that he should know so little, and the latter that he should know as they thought so much. By way of explanation of the novelists' supposed knowledge of the habits, manners, and language of circus men, it was said that he had acquired it by obtaining the entree to the arena at Astley's at the forenoon hours which riders, acrobats, and gymnasts devote to practicing the feats by which they win the applause of the spectators at night. There seems to have been no foundation for this statement, and a letter which has been published, in which Dickens asked for a hint as to places where the desired knowledge of circus manners and language could be gathered, does not appear, if we may judge from the results exhibited in the story which he was then planning, to have been very successful. Several years after the publication of that work, I was staying for a few days at the White Horse Mickelgate in the city of York, having a sitting-room in common with the ringmaster, the head-volta and revolving globe performer, and two of the gymnasts of a circus then located for the summer season in a permanent building on St. George's Field. One afternoon, when rain confined me to the house, I was reading the story, while the gymnasts were amusing themselves with the globe performer's props, one of the brace juggling with four brass balls, while the other balanced a sword on its point on a forefinger. Have you read this book? I asked one of them. Some of it, he replied, with his eyes on the rapidly revolving brass balls. What do you think of it? Rot! Such was the circus man's monosyllabic and emphatic condemnation of the story, which probably applied, however, only to the professional matters pertaining to Sleery's circus. Look here! he said, dropping the balls into his pockets, and himself upon a chair by the table at which I was sitting. There's a bit about Sleery's company which shows how much the writer knows about circuses. He turned over the leaves for a few moments, and read the following passage. All the fathers could dance upon rolling casks, stand upon bottles, catch knives and balls, twirl hand basins, ride upon anything, jump over everything, and stick at nothing. All the mothers could, and did, dance upon the slack wire and the tightrope, and perform rapid acts on barebacked steeds. Sleery's people must have been exceptionally clever, I observed. I should think so! he rejoined ironically. There are not many clowns and acrobats who can ride at all, and just as few riders who can do the balancing and juggling business. Althe Burgess is a rare exception. As for lady riders, out of a score who can ride a padhorse and fly through hoops and balloons, and over banners and garters, I don't suppose you would find three who can do a rapid act on the bareback of a horse. Each performer has his or her particular line of business, I suppose. Just so! you might just as well talk of Charles Matthews acting Hamlet. And as to all the mothers riding and doing the slack wire and the tightrope, there are more often none who can do anything in the show at all. Why, in our show, there are eight married men, and not one of their wives ever appears in the ring or ever has done. I ascertained afterwards that the ringmaster's wife was an actress and had, at that time, an engagement in London. One of the gymnasts had left his wife in Manchester, and one of a brace of acrobatic brothers had left his in the metropolis. The other brother, another acrobat, and the three clowns had their wives with them, but the only one connected with the circus was an elderly woman, the wife of one of the clowns, who was money-taker at the gallery entrance. There were five equestrianes, but they were all members of the proprietor's family. Look here again, continued the gymnast, turning to another part of the story. Sleary's company seems to be a rather strong one, and most of the men have wives and children all with them, and yet the whole of them, Sleary and his family and all, are represented as lodging at one house, a little pub in the outskirts of the town. They must have been like sheep in the pens of a cattle market. I never heard of such a thing. Why, there is more of us here than in any other house in the city. I may add that the proprietor and his family had, in this instance, apartments over one of the best shops in York. These, however, are matters which, while they render it of little value as a picture of circus life and character, do not diminish the interest of the story, which many consider one of Dickens's best works, and which the episode of Stephen Blackpool alone would entitle to a place amongst standard works of fiction. The acrobats and minstrels who give their entertainments on the sands and the cliffs had not made their appearance, when I turned my back upon the harbour and the bathing machines, and went northward, according to the compass, though my path lay in the shadow of what is called the East Cliff. It lay over a level beach, where patches of moist sand, alternated with flat protrusions of chalk, garnished with tufts of dark, ribbon-like marine algae, with many little pools and narrow channels, in which tiny crabs had been belated by the receding tide. On my left rose the high and perpendicular cliff. On my right stretched the sea, looking like an immense sheet of corrugated green glass. Broad stairs reached, I left the beach near the little harbour, and looked about the favourite seaside resort of the inimitable Boz. The only discoverable reason for which preference seems to have been its comparative quietness which enabled him to work. For a period of fifteen years he came here nearly every summer. In 1837, when he was writing the Pickwick papers, he lodged at number twelve in the High Street, which, though not very long, shows a mixture of shops and private houses, most of which have their first floors devoted to the reception of summer visitors. In 1840 he was here twice in June and September, staying on both occasions at Lawn House, a villa on the Kingsgate Road, occupied with the pathetic story of little Nell and her grandfather, which, aided as its effect is by such original creations as Dick Swiveller and Quilp the Dwarf, is, in my opinion, the most highly finished work he ever wrote. In the following year he came down in August, shifting his quarters to Fort House in the same pleasant neighbourhood. Next year he came down a month earlier when he attended Tannock Races, of which he wrote, I saw, oh, who shall say what an amount of character in the way of inconceivable villainy and blaggedism. I even got some new wrinkles in the way of showmen, conjurers, pee and thimblemen, and trampers generally. These races are held on elevated park-like land on the right of the road from Margate to Acle, and seem to attract large assemblages of the motley character usually found attending such amusements. I saw the scene from the distant and dusty road on one occasion, but though the reviewer of an evening journal assumed, at a later date, that I was in the habit of wandering from fair to fair, conversing with acrobats and showmen, I left its noise and blaggedism behind me, and strolled on to Acle. Though broad stairs is even now quieter than Margate, duller than Ramsgate, Dickens found it thirty years ago a less desirable summer retreat for a hard-working literary man than it had been a dozen years previously. He complained of brass bands and organ-grinders, and, while pondering in his mind the story of David Copperfield, often taught of shifting his quarters to Dover, Folkestone or Sandgate. Eventually he went to the Isle of Wight, but found the climate too innovating, and, after considering the relative advantages of Ramsgate and Herne Bay, returned to broad stairs. His last visit to the latter place was made in 1851, when he was sketching the outlines of the story of Bleak House. I left the town by York Gate, an ancient flint-built arch, furnished in the olden time with a portcullis and gates which have long since disappeared. A pleasant walk it is along the breezy road over the Green Ridge, on which the lighthouse stands, to warn the mariner from that bold promontory the North Forland, the dread of cockney voyages, many of whom land at Margate to avoid it, while others, after duly laughing at their fears and qualms, leave the deck when the pitching of the vessel and the driving of the spray over the foredeck warn them of their approach to it. Here, if there is a gale anywhere along the coast, it rages with the greatest violence, and the waves beat more fiercely against the lofty cliffs. Leaving the lighthouse behind, I descended the slope of the Green Ridge on which it stands, and soon saw the white walls and towers of Kingsgate Castle, rising out of the trees which surround them on the land side, and cutting the clear blue sky. The picturesque hamlet in their neighbourhood is named from the circumstance of Charles II and his brother then Duke of York, having once landed there, at a gap in the cliff, over which a brick arch has been constructed, and which is now used for launching the local lifeboat. A steep path, a little more to the southward, leads from the hamlet to the beach, the latter portion of the descent being facilitated by the construction of a rude flight of steps cut in the chalk. Descending these, I found a man loading a cart with seaweed which is much used on land near the coast as a manure on account of the soda and potash it contains. With this exception, and that of a solitary nursemaid and two or three children, there was no one on the beach, though Kingsgate struck me as a more desirable site for a new marine resort than the locality which has since become Westgate on sea. The accommodation afforded by the Admiral Digby, a public house on the cliff, causes it to be made the terminal point of many rambles from Margate. The cliff between this point and Margate is much more broken than is observable farther south. Lofty and solid as is the range of chalky heights, its seaward face has evidently receded before the waves, which in tempestuous weather are driven with tremendous force against the base of the cliff. The results of this sapping action are seen in deep recesses with their sandy bottoms strewn with seaweed and detached masses of chalk round which the tide flows at high water, but which are left standing for the present to show where the face of the cliff was once. Two of the most remarkable of these isolated masses have, I am informed, been removed since my last visit to obtain a site for the Margate Aquarium. At one point a broken projection of the cliff stretches out across the beach, leaving only a narrow passage round its extremity at low water, and none when the flood tide beats against the steep white wall from which it juts out. The sight of it, as I approached it on this occasion, reminded me of an adventure which had befallen me at that point a few years previously. I was walking along the beach towards Kingsgate, and had calculated when starting from Margate that I could reach that place before the tide flowed up to the cliff. I had walked about half the distance, without the advance of the briny influx creating in my mind any suspicion of the accuracy of my estimate, when I met an elderly gentleman walking very fast, with his trousers turned up to his knees, revealing a pair of bare legs and feet. The tide is coming in very fast, said he, scarcely pausing to give me the warning. You had better turn back, or you may not be able even to wade through it as I have done. I think I can reach Kingsgate, I rejoined, with careless confidence in my ability to accomplish what I had undertaken. If you will take my advice you will turn up at the next gap. The stranger looked over his shoulder to call to me, as he hurried in the opposite direction. I looked at the advancing tide, and then at the cliff, and accelerated my pace. It would be no joke, I thought, to be caught between them. I could not swim, and scaling that almost perpendicular wall of chalk was simply impracticable, except for an insect. The tide was coming up so fast that it soon became necessary for me to keep close to the cliff, where the irregular masses of broken chalk, strewn with seaweed, made walking more difficult than on the sand. My confidence underwent very slight diminution, however, until I approached the little promontory which has been described. The extremity of the nest, which has evidently been worn down by the operation of the waves, was under water, and the tide reached within a few feet of the cliff. By wading into the water I might reach a point where it might be practicable to clamber over it, but the slipperiness of the green film of minute vegetation which covered it was suggestive of the peril of a slip and a fall into the water, perhaps with a broken leg to prevent me from getting out again. There was no time for deliberation, however, and my perception of the necessity of instant action prompted me to step upon the rock and from one ledge to another, until I was three or four feet above the beach. As I did so I discovered at about the same height, but nearer to the cliff, what seemed to be one of the recesses which the waves have scooped in the chalk, and which are so numerous along the coast between Kingsgate and Westgate. There is one into which a fissure from the surface opens, and another where the fissure has been enlarged and extended until it affords a passage by a rough and steep ascent to the top of the cliff. Impelled by the thought that here might be a means of escape from what I was beginning to regard as a perilous dilemma, I scrambled towards the opening, which I found extended some distance parallel with the line of cliff, but curved in a manner which prevented me from seeing the end of it. It was just wide enough to admit one person, but barely five feet from the sandy bottom to the wave-worn crown so that I had to penetrate it in a stooping posture. In a few moments I saw the light at its southern end from which I scrambled down to the beach. Then I began to run, now splashing through the tide, now bounding from one half submerged mass of chalk to another until I reached the next gap. Margate Jetty soon became near enough for the harbour pier to be discernible between the black piles, and leaving the beach near the towering pinnacles of chalk which had had the name of No Man's Land conferred upon them, I proceeded to the high street in quest of a dinner. Though the end of the season was approaching, the continuance of bright pleasant weather warned me of the desirability of securing a lodging before the next steamer from London discharged its living cargo on the Jetty to wander through the streets, carpet-bag in hand, with anxious faces seeking a resting-place. It is a standing joke which the regular frequenters of the place play upon unsophisticated passengers that they will have to sleep in a bathing-machine, all the lodgings being occupied. And though almost every other house in the town is a lodging-house, I have seen scores of tired and famishing visitors tramping about the streets far into the night, seeking from house to house anything in the shape of sleeping accommodation, perhaps to be told by some jocular letter of lodgings as I actually heard said at Ramsgate that the doormat was at their service. Though never tired of wandering over the cliffs or along sandy beaches, seaside towns are, of all forms of brick-and-mortar agglomeration, my special aversion. I gladly leave to the mass of summer visitors the delights which they seem to find in basking in the broiling sun on Ramsgate sands, or the east cliff at Margate, while I stroll away from the town to seaweed-y solitudes, or the seclusion and greenery of the inland byways. I had no sooner dined, therefore, than I tramped away to the sequestered hamlet of Acle, whence after a rest and a glass of cobs ale at the crown and scepter I strolled across the fields to Birchington. Evening found me returning to Margate along the beach, with the cliff towering up on my right hand, red in the slanting rays of the setting sun, grey in the shadows, and a long stretch of flat masses of chalk on my left intersected with narrow channels and clothed with moist bunches of dusky-green ribbon-like sea-weeds, varied here and there with fringe-like tufts of pink and white. Here the channels of water lay in shadow, there they caught and reflected the rich tints of the sun-died clouds. Beyond, the seas spread out like a trembling sheet of gold.