henever our side scored a substantial success. The news of Lord
Roberts's victory at Paardeburg reached Badsey in the morning, after
the papers, and, returning by road from my farm round, I heard great
rejoicings and cheering from the direction of the village. Meeting a
boy, I learned that "Old Cronje" was defeated and a prisoner, with
"'leven thousand men!"--a report which proved to be correct with the
trifling discount of 9,000 of the latter! The same spirit of union for
a common cause was almost as evident at that time as in the far more
strenuous struggle of 1914-1918, and so long as England to herself
remains but true, doubtless our enemies will fulfil the part assigned
to them by the greatest of English poets.

A love of the marvellous is a common characteristic of country village
folks, and I have already referred to such beliefs in the supernatural
among my men. We had our own "white lady" on the highroad where it
turns off to Aldington, though I never met anyone who had seen her;
there were, too, signs and wonders before approaching deaths, and a
thrilling story of a headless calf in the neighbourhood.

An old house at Badsey, once a _hospitium_ or sanatorium for sick
monks from Evesham Abbey in pre-Reformation days, was reported to be
haunted, and people told tales of "the old fellows rattling about
again" of a night. Probably these beliefs had been encouraged in
former times by the monks themselves, to prevent the villagers prying
too closely into their occupations; and no doubt the scattered
individuals of the same body originated the popular theory that the
Abbey lands of which they were dispossessed would never, owing to a
curse, pass by inheritance in the direct line from father to eldest
son--an event that in the course of nature often fails, though by no
means invariably.

In recent years a startling story has been told, and even appeared in
a local paper, of a ghostly adventure near the Aldington turning. A
young lady (not a native), riding her bicycle to Evesham from Badsey,
passed, machine and all, right through an apparition which suddenly
crossed her path, without any resulting fall.

In connection with the monk's _hospitium_ I lately made an interesting
discovery as to the origin of a curious name of one of my fields,
which had always puzzled me. The field adjoined the _hospitium_, and
was always known as "the Signhurst." Field-names are a very
interesting study, they usually bear some signifi