He made the desert smile.

From the Uttoxeter Road we could see a Gothic bridge, with an embankment leading up to it, and a huge imitation of Stonehenge, in which we were much interested, that being one of the great objects of interest we intended visiting when we reached Salisbury Plain.  We were able to obtain a small guide-book, but it only gave us the information that the gardens consisted of a “labyrinth of terraces, walls, trellis-work, arbours, vases, stairs, pavements, temples, pagodas, gates, parterres, gravel and grass walks, ornamental buildings, bridges, porticos, seats, caves, flower-baskets, waterfalls, rocks, cottages, trees, shrubs and beds of flowers, ivied walls, moss houses, rock, shell, and root work, old trunks of trees, etc., etc.,” so, as it would occupy half a day to see the gardens thoroughly, we decided to come again on some future occasion.  A Gothic temple stood on the summit of a natural rock, and among other curiosities were a corkscrew fountain of very peculiar character, and vases and statues almost without end.

We now followed the main road to the Staffordshire town of Uttoxeter, passing the ruins of Croxden Abbey in the distance, where the heart of King John had been buried, and where plenty of traces of the extreme skill in agriculture possessed by the monks can be seen.  One side of the chapel still served as a cowshed, but perhaps the most interesting features were the stone coffins in the orchard as originally placed, with openings so small, that a boy of ten can hardly lie in one.

But we missed a sight which as good churchmen we were afterwards told we ought to have remembered.  October 31st was All-Hallows Eve, “when ghosts do walk,” and here we were in a place they revelled in—­so much so that they gave their name to it, Duninius’ Dale.  Here the curious sights known as “Will-o’-the-Wisp” could be seen magnificently by those who would venture a midnight visit.  But we had forgotten the day.

[Illustration:  CROXDEN ABBEY.]

We stopped for tea at Uttoxeter, and formed the opinion that it was a clean but rather sleepy town.  There was little to be seen in the church, as it was used in the seventeenth century as a prison for Scottish troops, “who did great damage.”  It must, however, have been a very healthy town, if we might judge from the longevity of the notables who were born there:  Sir Thomas Degge, judge of Western Wales and a famous antiquary, was born here in 1612, and died aged ninety-two; Thomas Allen, a distinguished mathematician and philosopher, the founder of the college at Dulwich and the local Grammar School as well, born 1542, died aged ninety; Samuel Bentley, poet, born 1720, died aged eighty-three; Admiral Alan Gardner, born at the Manor House in 1742, and who, for distinguished services against the French, was raised to the Irish Peerage as Baron Gardner of Uttoxeter, and was M.P. for Plymouth, died aged sixty-seven;