will be disappointed, for it is one of Barham's embellishments upon fact. "Tappington Moor" is, of course, Barham Downs, and the wild characteristics of the place are very well described in _The Hand of Glory_. The nearest approach to the Tappington gates existing in fact are the entrance gates to Broome Park, standing on the road near the lane leading to Barham; and the mansion of Broome, an Elizabethan country house, bears a strong resemblance to the stately seat seen in Barham's drawing. [Sidenote: THE "HALFWAY HOUSE"] The whole district abounds with legends and folk-lore suitable to this wild and treeless country, and that so romantic a humorist as Barham should have sprung from a local family of Kentish squires is only fitting. The terror of these parts at the end of last century was Black Robin, a highwayman who frequented the roads and made his headquarters at a little inn on the by-road between Bishopsbourne and Barham. "Black Robin's Corner" it is still called, but the negro's head of the sign is a libel upon that "gentleman of the road." He took his name, not from the colour of his skin, but from the crape mask and the black clothes he wore, and from the black mare he rode. Not a pleasant fellow to meet On the lone bleak moor at the midnight hour, Beneath the gallows tree; but almost preferable to the spectre horseman who led a foreign traveller out of his way on these Downs. Night had come on, overtaking a party of mounted travellers making for Dover, and so dark had it grown that they soon became separated. However, the hindmost party dimly perceived two cavaliers in front, and spurred towards them; but when the horses' hoofs in advance flashed fire and their riders were seen to grow strangely luminous, these pixie-led travellers thought it time to turn back. It _was_ time they did so, for already their horses were sinking in a bog, and as they turned they heard the rest of their party blowing their horns in quite another direction. Possibly they turned in at the "Halfway House" that stands away back from the road behind a screen of trees, just past the eighth milestone; both to take something to enliven their spirits withal and to tell the landlord of these strange happenings. If they did, I have no doubt that they saw stranger sights still when they came forth, when the earth would rise up and smite them in the face, and the swinging sign of the "Halfway House" would perform a somersault over the constellations. For they dealt in strange and curious liquors here in the days of old; spirits that had never paid tribute to the Excise, and were ever so many degrees over-proof, made the heart of man glad and his legs to tie themselves into Gordian knots. You cannot get so immediately and incapably drunk nowadays at the "Halfway House," and 'tis better so, but I have seen the place drunk dry in the space of an hour by thirsty Volunteers marching from London to Dover at Eastertide. When they had