During the Boer War the common foe was, of course, "Old Kruger" (with a soft _g_), and we hoisted the Union Jack in front of the Manor whenever 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.