for the same glorious principle.

It was rebuilt by the freebooter who had burnt it down; one Philip
Heredith, a descendant of Philip Here-Deith, whose name is inscribed in
the Domesday Book as one of the knights of the army of Duke William
which had assembled at Dives for the conquest of England. Philip
Heredith, who was as great a fighter as his Norman ancestor, established
his claim to his new estate, and avoided litigation concerning it, by
confining the Royalist owner and his family within the walls of the
moat-house before setting it on fire. He afterwards married and settled
down in the new house with his young wife. But the honeymoon was
disturbed by the ghost of the cavalier he had incinerated, who warned
him that as he had founded his line in horror it would end in horror,
and the house he had built would fall to the ground.

Philip Heredith, like many other great fighters, was an exceedingly
pious man, with a profound belief in the efficacy of prayer. He
endeavoured to thwart the ghost's curse by building a church in the
moat-house grounds, where he spent his Sundays praying for the eternal
welfare of the gentleman he had cut off in the flower of his manhood.
Perhaps the prayers were heard, for, when Philip Heredith in the course
of time became the first occupant of the brand-new vault he had built
for himself and his successors, he left behind him much wealth, and a
catalogue of his virtues in his own handwriting. The wealth he left to
his heirs, but he expressly stipulated that the record of his virtues
was to be carved in stone and placed as an enduring tablet, for the
edification of future generations, inside the church he had built.

It was a wise precaution on his part. The dead are dumb as to their own
merits, and the living think only of themselves. Time sped away, until
the first of the Herediths was forgotten as completely as though he had
never existed; even his dust had been crowded off the shelf of his own
vault to make room for the numerous descendants of the prolific and
prosperous line he had founded. But the tablet remained, and the old
moat-house he had built still stood.

It was a wonderful old place and a delight to the eye, this mediaeval
moat-house of mellow brick, stone facings, high-pitched roof, with
terraced gardens and encircling moat. It had defied Time better than its
builder, albeit a little shakily, with signs of decrepitude here and
there apparent in the crow's-feet cracks