Produced by Susan Skinner, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [Illustration: DEAD MAN'S PLACK.] DEAD MAN'S PLACK AND AN OLD THORN BY W. H. HUDSON 1920 LONDON & TORONTO J. M. DENT & SONS LTD. New York: E. P. DUTTON & CO. CONTENTS DEAD MAN'S PLACK: Preamble Chapter I. II. III. IV. V. VI. VII. VIII. IX. X. XI. XII. AN OLD THORN: Chapter I. II. III. POSTSCRIPT ILLUSTRATIONS DEAD MAN'S PLACK HAWTHORN AND IVY, NEAR THE GREAT RIDGE WOOD DEAD MAN'S PLACK PREAMBLE "The insect tribes of human kind" is a mode of expression we are familiar with in the poets, moralists and other superior persons, or beings, who viewing mankind from their own vast elevation see us all more or less of one size and very, very small. No doubt the comparison dates back to early, probably Pliocene, times, when some one climbed to the summit of a very tall cliff, and looking down and seeing his fellows so diminished in size as to resemble insects, not so gross as beetles perhaps but rather like emmets, he laughed in the way they laughed then at the enormous difference between his stature and theirs. Hence the time-honoured and serviceable metaphor. Now with me, in this particular instance, it was all the other way about--from insect to man--seeing that it was when occupied in watching the small comedies and tragedies of the insect world on its stage that I stumbled by chance upon a compelling reminder of one of the greatest tragedies in England's history--greatest, that is to say, in its consequences. And this is how it happened. One summer day, prowling in an extensive oak wood, in Hampshire, known as Harewood Forest, I discovered that it counted among its inhabitants no fewer than three species of insects of peculiar interest to me, and from that time I haunted it, going there day after day to spend long hours in pursuit of my small quarry. Not to kill and preserve their diminutive corpses in a cabinet, but solely to witness the comedy of their brilliant little lives. And as I used to take my luncheon in my pocket I fell into the habit of going to a particular spot, some opening in the dense wood with a big tree to lean against and give me shade, where after refreshing myself with food and drink I could smoke my pipe in solitude and peace. Eventually I came to prefer one spot for my midday rest in the central part of the wood, where a stone cross, slender, beautifully proportioned and about eighteen feet high, had been erected some seventy or eighty years before by the lord of the manor. On one side of the great stone block on which the cross stood there was an inscription which told that it was placed there to mark the spot known from of old as Dead Man's Plack; that, according to tradition, handed from father to son, it was just here that King Edgar slew his friend and favourite Earl Athelwold, when hunting in the forest.