"There's Ganton-on-the-Hill," continued the ancient. "You can see the sea from there in clear weather; and many's the time I've heard the guns in France from Upper Crobury of a still night. Then, four mile away, there's the haunted Grange, though nobody's allowed past the gate. Not as nobody wants to be," he added, reflectively. "The haunted Grange?" questioned Dillon. "Where is that?" "Hollow Grange?" said the old man. "Why, it lies----" "Oh, Hollow Grange--yes! I know where Hollow Grange is, but I was unaware that it was reputed to be haunted." "Ah," replied the other, pityingly, "you're new to these parts; I see that the minute I set eyes on you. Maybe you was wounded in France, and you're down here to get well, like?" "Quite so. Your deductive reasoning is admirable." "Ah," said the sage, chuckling with self-appreciation, "I ain't lived in these here parts for nigh on seventy-five years without learning to use my eyes, I ain't. For seventy-four years and seven months," he added proudly, "I ain't been outside this here county where I was born, and I can use my eyes, I can; I know a thing I do, when I see it. Maybe it was providence, as you might say, what brought you to the _Threshers_ to-day." "Quite possibly," Dillon admitted. "He was just such another as you," continued the old man with apparent irrelevance. "You don't happen to be stopping at Hainingham Vicarage?" "No," replied Dillon. "Ah! he was stopping at Hainingham Vicarage and he'd been wounded in France. How he got to know Dr. Kassimere I can't tell you; not at parson's, anyway. Parson won't never speak to him. Only last Sunday week he preached agin him; not in so many words, but I could see his drift. He spoke about them heathen women livin' on an island--sort of female Robinson Crusoes, I make 'em out, I do--as saves poor shipwrecked sailors from the sea and strangles of 'em ashore." Dillon glanced hard at the voluble old man. "The sirens?" he suggested, conscious of a sudden hot surging about his heart. "Ah, that's the women I mean." "But where is the connection?" "Ah, you're new to these parts, you are. That Dr. Kassimere he keeps a siren down in Hollow Grange. They see her--these here strangers (same as the shipwrecked sailors parson told about)--and it's all up with 'em." Dillon stifled a laugh, in which anger would have mingled with contempt. To think that in the twentieth century a man of science was like to meet with the fate of Dr. Dee in the days of Elizabeth! Truly there were dark spots in England. But could he credit the statement of this benighted elder that a modern clergyman had actually drawn an analogy between Phryné Devant and the sirens? It was unbelievable. "What was the unhappy fate," he asked, masking his intolerance, "of the young man staying at the Vicarage?"