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 CHAPTER XI

A pleasant road—Memories—Shortening of names—Health-drinking—A Miller and his mill—A rail-less town—Changed times and changed ways—An Elizabethan church clock—A curious coincidence—Old superstitions—Satire in carving—"The Monks of Old"     204

CHAPTER XII

A civil tramp—Country hospitality—Sleaford—A Lincolnshire saying—A sixteenth-century vicarage—Struck by lightning—"The Queen of Villages"—A sculptured anachronism—Swineshead—A strange legend—Local proverbs—Chat with a "commercial"—A mission of destruction—The curfew—Lost our way—Out of the beaten track—A grotesque figure and mysterious legend—Puzzling inscriptions—The end of a long day     226

CHAPTER XIII

The Fenland capital—Mother and daughter towns—"Boston stump"—One church built over another—The company at our inn—A desultory ramble—An ancient prison—The Pilgrim Fathers—The banks of the Witham—Hussey Tower—An English Arcadia—Kyme Castle—Benington—A country of many churches—Wrangle—In search of a ghost—A remote village—Gargoyles—The grotesque in art     248

CHAPTER XIV

Wind-blown trees—Marshlands—September weather—Wainfleet—An ancient school—The scent of the sea—The rehabilitation of the old-fashioned ghost—A Lincolnshire mystery—A vain search—Too much alike—Delightfully indefinite—Halton Holgate—In quest of a haunted house     268