The Barbican, Sandwich 209 Sandwich, from Great Stonar 210 Richborough, and the Kentish Coast-line towards Ramsgate 213 The Smuggler's Leap 215 Monkton 217 " 218 The "Ville of Sarre" 220 Chislett 223 Reculver 225 Fordwich 228 Fordwich Town Hall 230 Sturry 232 The Devil's Footprint 234 Minster-in-Sheppey 243 Tomb of Sir Robert de Shurland 245 The Horse-vane, Minster-in-Sheppey 246 The Soul, from a Monument in Minster-in-Sheppey Church 249 The Estuary of the Medway, from the Road near Minster-in-Sheppey 251 Shurland Castle 253 Netley Abbey 261 Salisbury Plain: where the Lavington Road branches off to the left from the one to Devizes 266 [Illustration: The Ingoldsby Country] CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY The present writer foregathered a little while since with a man who had been to the uttermost parts of the earth. He had just returned from Australia, and was casually met on what the vulgar call the "Tuppenny Tube," travelling from the Bank to Shepherd's Bush. It was a humorous anti-climax to all those other journeys, but that is not the point here to be made. He was full, as might have been expected, of tales strange and curious of those outposts of civilisation he had visited, and of legends of places--whose names generally ended with two gulps and a click--where civilisation was an unknown quantity. But to this man, who had been everywhere and elsewhere, who had crossed the Dark Continent when it was still dark, England, his native land, was largely a sealed book. Even as one spoke with him it could be perceived how perfect an exemplar he was of many globe-trotting Britons who roam the world and can talk to you at first hand of Bulawayo or the Australian bush, but are instantly nonplussed if the subject of rural England be broached.