These were far rides, but close about the Speech House the place teems with interest. In the last years he would walk every evening to look at the great stag-headed ruins of the oaks, which thrust their gnarled and crooked limbs fantastically into the closing night, or stand watching the shadows fall on the spruce rides which stretch out near the old inn, till, in the fading light, it seemed as though figures were moving in and out on the greensward of the great vistas. In the bright sunshine, imposing silence on himself and his companions, he would watch for long together the life in one of the forest glades, the moving creatures in the grass, the tits playing on the branches of a silver birch silhouetted against the sky, the little blue butterflies chasing each other over the pink crab-apple bloom. He would follow the tapping of a woodpecker, and wait in the evening for the owl's cry to begin; and here, as elsewhere, to be with him was to see in everything unsuspected things. In the winter, Speech House was at first Sir Charles's headquarters for part of January, but there, 500 feet above the sea, the roads were sometimes impassable from snow. At last Lady Dilke became too delicate to face the mid-winter visit, and, except for elections, Whitsuntide and the autumn were the two occasions for their stay. He went also each year to the miners' demonstration--in 1908 so ill that it seemed impossible that even his power of endurance could enable him to bear the strain, and in 1910 again because he said he 'would not fail Rowlinson and the miners,' though he fainted after the meeting there. One of their early headquarters in the Forest was Lindors, the home of two among their first and warmest friends--Mr. Frederick Martin and his wife. It is in a lovely little valley with sheltered lawns, the rush of the water sounding always behind the house, above which the old castle of St. Briavels stands. The ancient prison is still there, and the castle dates back to the thirteenth century, and claims an almost unbroken succession of Constables of the Castle and Wardens of the Forest of Dean, beginning with John de Monmouth.