It is only by dint of much climbing that one reaches Acryse, for it tops the range of uplands that shut in the Elham valley. Climbing up the lane by which Master Marsh and his man Ralph descended, in the legend of "The Leech of Folkestone," the woods of Acryse are found clothing the crest and extending densely into a shrouded table-land, where the sun-rays percolate but dimly through a heavy overarching interlaced canopy of boughs. Acryse means "Oak Hill," but, whatever the character of these woods may once have been, the oak certainly is not the most numerous in them to-day. If one tree preponderates over any other species here, it is the beech, which in the dim light and closely-serried ranks has grown so spindly that it only begins to throw out branches at a height of some thirty or forty feet from the ground. The simpleton who could not see the wood for the trees is proverbial, but it is at first impossible to see Acryse, on account of the woods. And no wonder, for the woods are so large and Acryse so small. There is not even the semblance of a hamlet. The manor house and the adjoining manorial chapel form the whole of the place, except some scattered few cottages out of sight, for whose inhabitants the chapel serves the function of parish church. The Papillons, who once held the manor of Acryse, have long since relinquished it, and Mackinnons have for three generations past resided here. The butterfly crest of the old owners is therefore sought in vain in manor house or chapel. Chapel and house are discreetly secluded within the mossy woods, and only the diminutive spire of the one and some few glimpses of the outbuildings and bellcote of the other are gained between the clustering tree-stems. History, by association, is making at Acryse, for it is the seat of that Colonel Mackinnon who commanded the C.I.V. in the second Boer War. [Illustration: ACRYSE.] If signs of human habitation are small here, those of bird-life are overwhelming. The woods of Acryse are one vast rookery. In winter, when the boughs are unclothed, their nests occupy every fork of the branches, and all the year they make their presence known, not only by the disfigurement of the stranger's clothing as he walks under their roosting-places, but by the rising and falling bursts of cawing that mark all hours of the day, like a perpetual session of Parliament with the Speaker absent and the Irish members in individual and collective possession of the House, each one talking "nineteen to the dozen," and each with a personal grievance to duly ventilate. For the note of the rookery is a distinctly querulous one, always in opposition. Occasionally, when the greater din dies down, grave and reverend--or, at least, deep and self-satisfied--individual voices are heard, like those of well-fed and paunchy ministers rising to defend their departments and themselves, with voices remonstrant, argumentative, or triumphant.