It was a very old-looking, long, low red-brick building, with a verandah in front, and being well within the grounds, sheltered by old oak, elm, ash and beech trees, could hardly be seen from the road. The lawns and gardens were large, and behind them were two good-sized grass fields. Within the domain one had the feeling that he was far away in the country in one of its haunts of ancient peace, and yet all round it, outside of its old hedges and rows of elms, the ground had been built over, mostly with good-sized brick houses standing in their own gardens. It was a favourite suburb with well-to-do persons in the city, rents were high and the builders had long been coveting and trying to get possession of all this land which was "doing no good," in a district where haunts of ancients peace were distinctly out of place and not wanted. But the owner (aged ninety-eight) refused to sell. Not only the builders, but his own sons and sons' sons had represented to him that the rent he was getting for this property was nothing but an old song compared to what it would bring in, if he would let it on a long building lease. There was room there for thirty or forty good houses with big gardens. And his answer invariably was: "It shan't be touched! I was born in that house, and though I'm too old ever to go and see it again, it must not be pulled down--not a brick of it, not a tree cut, while I'm alive. When I'm gone you can do what you like, because then I shan't know what you are doing." My friends and relations, who were in occupation of the house, and loved it, hoped that he would go on living many, many years: but alas! the visit of the feared dark angel was to them and not to the old owner, who was perhaps "too old to die"; the dear lady of the house and its head was taken away and the family broken up, and from that day to this I have never ventured to revisit that sweet spot, nor sought to know what has been done to it. At that time it used to be my week-end home, and on one of my early visits I noticed the skull of an animal nailed to the wall about a yard above the stable door. It was too high to be properly seen without getting a ladder, and when the gardener told me that it was a bulldog's skull, I thought no more about it.