a fluke of
one of the former he fell to the earth with a shock that well-nigh drove
all the wind out of his stout little body. He was up in a moment,
however, and off again.

Soon the three were coursing over the downs like hares. It was
difficult running, for the ground was undulating and broken, besides
being covered in a few places with gorse, and the wind and rain beat so
fiercely on their faces as almost to blind them.

About a mile or so beyond the ruins of Sandown Castle there is an old
inn, called the "Checkers of the Hope," or "The Checkers," named after,
it is said, and corrupted from, "Chaucer's Inn" at Canterbury. It
stands in the midst of the solitary waste; a sort of half-way house
between the towns of Sandwich and Deal; far removed from either,
however, and quite beyond earshot of any human dwelling. This, so says
report, was a celebrated resort of smugglers in days gone by, and of men
of the worst character; and as one looks at the irregular old building
standing, one might almost say unreasonably, in that wild place, one
cannot help feeling that it must have been the scene of many a savage
revelry and many a deed of darkness in what are sometimes styled "the
good old times."

Some distance beyond this, farther into the midst of the sandhills,
there is a solitary tombstone; well known, both by tradition and by the
inscription upon it, as "Mary Bax's tomb."

Here Long Orrick resolved to make a stand; knowing that no shout that
Rodger might give vent to could reach the Checkers in the teeth of such
a gale.

The tale connected with poor Mary Bax is brief and very sad. She lived
about the end of the last century, and was a young and beautiful girl.
Having occasion to visit Deal, she set out one evening on her solitary
walk across the bleak sandhills. Here she was met by a brutal foreign
seaman, a Lascar, who had deserted from one of the ships then lying in
the Downs. This monster murdered the poor girl and threw her body into
a ditch that lies close to the spot on which her tomb now stands. The
deed, as may well be supposed, created great excitement in Deal and the
neighbourhood; for Mary Bax, being young, beautiful, and innocent, was
well known and much loved.

There was, at the time this murder was perpetrated, a youth named John
Winter, who was a devoted admirer of poor Mary. He was much younger
than she, being only seventeen, while she was twenty-three. He became
almost mad when he hear