Another peer has made Epsom history in a different way. At Pit Place lived the second Lord Lyttelton, and at Pit Place he died, leaving behind him a profligate name and a ghost story which Dr. Johnson thought the most extraordinary he had ever heard. It was in November, 1779; Lord Lyttelton had just returned from Ireland, and was seized with suffocating fits. One night he dreamt a dream. A dove hovered over him, changed to a woman in white, and spoke to him. It was a dead face, and he knew who it was; her two daughters were under his roof. Her words were few: "Lord Lyttelton, prepare to die!" "When?" he gasped. "In three days," she answered, and vanished. He called his man, who found him wet with sweat and his whole frame working. The third day came, and he jested with his guests at breakfast--"If I live over to-night, I shall have jockeyed the ghost." He dined at five, went to bed at eleven, called his servant a slovenly dog for not bringing a spoon for his medicine, and sent for a spoon. The man returned, found him in a fit, and roused the house. But Lord Lyttelton was dead. He was thirty-five. [Illustration: _A Quiet Corner in Witley_ (_p. 159_).] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote A: It is generally admitted, that a horse which will run four miles in eight minutes, carrying a weight of eight stone and a-half, must win plates. _Bingley._] CHAPTER XXV MID-SURREY DOWNS AND COMMONS Ewell.--A Clear Stream.--Nonsuch Palace.--The Right Use for a King's Gift.--Cheam.--Satin Haycocks.--A Chained Anachronism.--Chessington.--Dancing Round the Mulberry Tree.--A House of Mourning.--A Fool for a present.--Esher.--The great horse Bendigo.--Macaulay and the Hop-pickers.--Surrey English.--Gypsy boys selling a pony. North and south of Epsom are scattered villages on downs and commons; some, like Ewell and Cheam to the north and east, changing the word village into town; others, like Walton-on-the-hill and Headley to the south-west, or Chessington to the north-west, merely groups of cottages with a church. Epsom is the centre of the Surrey churches which have been destroyed or disused rather than restored, and the reason for the destruction of the group is obscure. Some strange infection ran in the destroyer's brains; Epsom, perhaps, began it; Ewell, Cheam, Headley fell later; Esher built a new church, but stayed from destroying the old. Walton, Woodmansterne, and Banstead have been altered almost out of recognition of what was old; Chessington alone looks upon almost untroubled centuries.