“What queer names!” say we, sighing at the end of our draught, and holding out the glass to be replenished.

“Bean’t queer at all, as I can see, sir,” says mine host, handing back our glass, “seeing as this here is the Blawing Stwun, his self,” putting his hand on a square lump of stone, some three feet and a half high, perforated with two or three queer holes, like petrified antediluvian rat-holes, which lies there close under the oak, under our very nose.  We are more than ever puzzled, and drink our second glass of ale, wondering what will come next.  “Like to hear un, sir?” says mine host, setting down Toby Philpot on the tray, and resting both hands on the “Stwun.”  We are ready for anything; and he, without waiting for a reply, applies his mouth to one of the ratholes.  Something must come of it, if he doesn’t burst.  Good heavens!  I hope he has no apoplectic tendencies.  Yes, here it comes, sure enough, a gruesome sound between a moan and a roar, and spreads itself away over the valley, and up the hillside, and into the woods at the back of the house, a ghost-like, awful voice.  “Um do say, sir,” says mine host, rising purple-faced, while the moan is still coming out of the Stwun, “as they used in old times to warn the country-side by blawing the Stwun when the enemy was a-comin’, and as how folks could make un heered then for seven mile round; leastways, so I’ve heered Lawyer Smith say, and he knows a smart sight about them old times.”  We can hardly swallow Lawyer Smith’s seven miles; but could the blowing of the stone have been a summons, a sort of sending the fiery cross round the neighbourhood in the old times?  What old times?  Who knows?  We pay for our beer, and are thankful.

“And what’s the name of the village just below, landlord?”

“Kingstone Lisle, sir.”

“Fine plantations you’ve got here?”

“Yes, sir; the Squire’s ’mazing fond of trees and such like.”

“No wonder.  He’s got some real beauties to be fond of.  Good-day, landlord.”

“Good-day, sir, and a pleasant ride to ’ee.”

And now, my boys, you whom I want to get for readers, have you had enough?  Will you give in at once, and say you’re convinced, and let me begin my story, or will you have more of it?  Remember, I’ve only been over a little bit of the hillside yet—­what you could ride round easily on your ponies in an hour.  I’m only just come down into the Vale, by Blowing Stone Hill; and if I once begin about the Vale, what’s to stop me?  You’ll have to hear all about Wantage, the birthplace of Alfred, and Farringdon, which held out so long for Charles the First (the Vale was near Oxford, and dreadfully malignant—­full of Throgmortons, Puseys, and Pyes, and such like; and their brawny retainers).  Did you ever read Thomas Ingoldsby’s “Legend of Hamilton Tighe”?  If you haven’t, you ought to have.  Well, Farringdon is where he lived, before he went to sea; his real name was Hamden Pye, and the Pyes were the