Time went by, and others held the bishop’s land, and held fast to it, despite the ceaseless pleadings of the unhappy wraith, and even to this day they will tell you, sometimes floating along by the hedge of some quiet meadow, or flitting between the trees in a lonely copse, you may see a pale, sad-faced form in Lincoln green, seeking someone who will listen to his weary appeal, and return to the people the common land which he enclosed in the days when Edward III. was King of England. Fingest to-day, you will find, a very charming little place amid woods and hills. Its fine old church has not changed much since Bishop Burghersh lived his selfish life in this quiet vale. There are traces of Saxon work in the Church, masonry that was three or four hundred years old in the bishop’s time, and an unusual tower of great age and height, ending in twin red gables, rises high above the little church. Down the valley you come, in a few miles, to Hambleden, with its picturesque old manor house, and a little further on to a beautiful reach of the Thames, midway between Henley and Medmenham, with its old abbey and its memories of the eighteenth century “Hell Fire Club,” and the grim stories told of the wild and extravagant doings of its dissolute members. Or go north from Fingest up through the beech woods and leafy lanes of the Chilterns, or west, till you rise, in a few miles, to six or seven hundred feet above sea level in a country that is as remote and unspoilt as you can wish. All this you may reach from London in a summer day’s trip. Strike north from Henley or west from High Wycombe, or West Wycombe, and you will soon find yourself among little forgotten villages set among the woods where the Chilterns slope down to the Thames, amid scenery that is as charming as any England can show. [Illustration: _Ruins of Fingest Palace, and Fingest Church._] [Illustration: Man shoeing a horse in his workshop, perhaps a cave.] WAYLAND SMITH AND HIS CAVE. It was such a long time ago since Wayland Smith came into this country that even the most learned men are uncertain as to his origin. He came, they think, as Weland, a heathen god, kinsman of Thor, the Scandinavian God of Thunder; and for many years he was a being of great importance in Pagan England. But he fell upon bad times. Weland seems to have been a hard-working and humble deity, and when men would no longer work for him, he had to work for them. And very good work he did, too, it seems. Perhaps, in his better days, he made Thor’s hammers for him; anyhow, when he came down in the world, he took to the blacksmith’s trade. You will come across traces of poor Weland in many parts of the country, but nowhere will you find a stranger relic of his working days than in his smithy--Wayland Smith’s cave they call it now--quite close to the side of that ancient track-way that skirts the summit of the Berkshire Downs above the White Horse Vale.