n the upper regions, amidst that sea of leaves, whole
tribes of birds, long since vanished from England, carried on their
aerial business, and now and then the eagle made a swoop amongst
them, and then there was a grand scattering.

Many a lonely pool there was, where the kingfisher had never seen
the face of man; many a bushel, not to say waggon load, of nuts
rotted for want of modern schoolboys to gather them; many an acre
of blackberries wasted their sweetness on the desert air.

Now and then came the horn of the hunter, waking up the echoes,
then the loud murmur of hounds, then the rush and clamour of the
chase swept by, and all was quiet again, even as it is said to be
in the solitudes of the Black Forest, when the Wild Huntsman has
passed.

But there was a lonelier and yet wilder region, where the sound of
the hunter's horn only penetrated in faint vibrations from the far
distance.

This region was a deep and entangled morass, which had only been
explored by the veteran hunter of former days, or by the hunted
outlaw of the present. Streams had overflown their banks, the water
had stagnated, rank foliage had arisen, and giant trees rotted in
swamp and slime.

The Normans had never penetrated into this wilderness of slimy
desolation, although, of course, they had again and again reached
its borders and found bogs of bottomless depth, quagmires which
would suck one out of sight in a few minutes, and at nightfall
legions of evil spirits, as they thought them--for after dark these
sloughs were alive with Jack-o'-lanterns, which men believed to be
the souls of unbaptized infants.

In former Chronicles we have described the old hall of Aescendune,
as it stood in Anglo-Saxon days; it was then rather a home, a kind
of "moated grange," than a fortress.

But when Hugo the Norman took possession, he could not endure to
live in a house incapable of standing a regular siege. And well he
might have such feelings, when he remembered that he lived in the
midst of a subject population, to whom his tyranny had rendered him
and his men-at-arms hateful.

So he sent at once for Ralph of Evreux, a skilful architect, whose
line lay in the raising of castles and such like, who knew how to
dig the dungeon and embattle the keep, and into his hands he
committed the rebuilding of the castle of Aescendune.

All was bustle and activity. The poor thralls of the estate were
"worked to death;" stone had to be brought from an immense