Such are the legends still current at the Back of Beyond, but they are dwindling away. Even old Hogben could find it possible to say that "ghostesses" were already "quite out-o'-doors"--by which he meant that they were out of fashion. But he was bung-full of smuggling lore, and could illustrate his stories with object lessons, as he drove his steady course along the Stone Street. "'See dat tree," he would say, in passing a copse. "Dat's where de Ransleys"--naming a ferocious family of smugglers, men and women, notorious for their cruelties and outrages--"dat's where de Ransleys tied one of deir haases, before dey were taken off to Maidstone Gaol." The horse was starved to death, thus haltered, and the gang, who had been known to beat a Revenue officer to death, were almost heart-broken when they heard of it. Such contradictions are we all. CHAPTER XIII THE BACK OF BEYOND (_continued_) If we continued along this straight road, the Mecca of the Stone Street carriers, Canterbury, would be reached again. Instead, we turn to the right, and in a mile and a half reach the Elham Valley and the hoary village of Lyminge, looking very new when viewed from a little distance, by reason of the sudden eruption of red-roofed villas come to disturb the ancient seclusion. Have a care how you pronounce the name of this village, lest by some uncovenanted rendering you proclaim yourself a stranger. The cautious in these matters always accost the first inhabitant met with, and ask him the name of the place, a method never known to fail unless the encounter takes place outside the post-office and the inhabitant be a crusty one who, curtly, and with an over-the-shoulder jerk of the thumb, says, "You'll find it written up there." [Illustration: LYMINGE.] By the united testimony of the phonetic spelling of the thirteenth century and the twentieth century pronunciation of the natives, "Lyminge" should be enunciated with a short, not a long, "y" for the first syllable; while one should, for the second, pronounce as in "singe" or "hinge." Authority for the ancient pronunciation being the same as now is found in the name of a thirteenth-century rector, spelled "de Limminge," which clinches the matter. It is, however, quite other-guesswork with the meaning or the derivation of the name. One school of antiquaries finds its origin in the Latin name of the Stone Street, which when the Romans came was, they tell us, an ancient British trackway called the Heol-y-Maen, or Stone Path. The Romans reconstructed both the path and its name, which, in the Latinised "Via Limenea," was as near as they could get to the uncouth tongue of the Britons. Unfortunately for this ingenious theory, Lyminge is a mile and a half from the Stone Street. It really derived its name, in common with Lympne, from the Flumen Limenea, or river Limen, which once flowed down the valley, a considerable stream, now shrunken to a tiny brook. [Illustration: LYMINGE CHURCH.]