so fashionable, a man must have lived hard indeed to
attract attention. Nevertheless, Samuel Pepys, the Diarist, refers to
him more than once, each time commenting upon the vileness of his
company and his offensive behaviour. Upon one occasion, we are told, at
the play-house the whole audience was scandalized by a _loose drunken
frolic,_ in which _Mr. William Pleydell, a gentleman of Hampshire,_
played a disgraceful part. What was worse, he carried his dissolute
habits into the countryside, and at one time his way of living at the
family seat White Ladies was so openly outrageous that the incumbent of
Bilberry actually denounced the squire from the pulpit, referring to him
as 'a notorious evil-liver' and 'an abandoned wretch.' If not for his
good name, however, for the house and pleasure-gardens he seems to have
had some respect, for it was during his tenure that the stables were
rebuilt and the gardens decorated with statuary which has since
disappeared. '_A sundial_'"--the sensation which the word produced was
profound, and Jill cried out with excitement--"'_a sundial, bearing the
date 1663 and the cipher W.P., still stands in the garden of the old
dower-house, which passed out of the hands of the family early in the
nineteenth century._'"

Berry stopped reading, and laid the book down.

"The dower-house?" cried Daphne blankly.

Her husband nodded.

"But I never knew there was one. Besides----"

"Better known to-day as 'The Lawn, Bilberry.'"

"Quite right," said Jonah. "A hundred years ago that stood inside the
park."

"The Lawn?" cried Jill. "Why, that's where the fire was. Years and years
ago. I remember old Nanny taking me down to see it the next day. And
it's never been rebuilt."

"To my knowledge," said I, "it's had a board up, saying it's for sale,
for the last fifteen years. Shall we go in for it? They can't want much.
The house is gutted, the garden's a wilderness, and----"

A cry from Adele interrupted me. While we were talking, she had picked
up the volume.

"Listen to this," she said. "' William Pleydell died unmarried and
intestate in 1667, and was succeeded by his cousin Anthony. Except that
during the former's tenure a good deal of timber was cut, White Ladies
had been well cared for. The one blot upon his stewardship was the
disappearance of the greater part of the family plate, which Nicholas
Pleydell's will proves to have been unusually rare and valuable. _There
used to exist a legend, f