g about the cote. The whole valley was full of
westering sunshine, and the country sounds came pleasantly up through
the still air.

They stood in a wide open pasture, but in the centre of it rose a
small, dark, and thickly grown square holt of wood, surrounded by a
high green bank of turf, and Walter asked what that was. The old
bailiff looked at him a moment without speaking and then said, "That
is the Red Camp, sir." Walter said pleasantly, "And whose camp is it?"
but it came suddenly into his head that long ago his father had told
him a curious tale about the place, but he could not remember what the
tale was. The old man answering his question said, "Ah, sir, who can
say? perhaps it was the old Romans who made it, or perhaps older men
still; but there was a sore battle hereabouts." And then he went on in
a slow and serious way to tell him an old tale of how a few warriors
had held the place against an army, and that they had all been put to
the sword there; he said that in former days strange rusted weapons
and bones had been ploughed up in the field, and then he added that
the Camp had ever since been left desolate and that no one cared to
set foot within it; yet for all that it was said that a great treasure
lay buried within it, for that was what the men were guarding, though
those that took the place and slew them could never find it; "and that
was all long ago," he said.

Walter, as the old man spoke, walked softly to the wood and peered at
it over the mound; it was all grown up within, close and thick, an
evil tangle of plants and briars. It was dark and even cold looking
within the wood, though the air lay warm all about it. The mound was
about breast high, and there was a grass-grown trench all round out of
which the earth had been thrown up. It came into Walter's head that
the place had seen strange things. He thought of it as all rough and
newly made, with a palisade round the mound, with spears and helmets
showing over, and a fierce wild multitude of warriors surging all
round; the Romans, if they had been Romans, within, grave and anxious,
waiting for help that never came. All this came into his mind with a
pleasant sense of security, as a man who is at ease looks on a picture
of old and sad things, and finds it minister to his content. Yet the
place kept a secret of its own, Walter felt sure of that. And the
treasure, was that there all the time? buried in some corner of the
wood, money lying idle th