Their own absurdities and contradictions form the best refutation of the common accounts. In details they are irreconcilable with each other. According to one, the King was alone with Tiril; to another, with all his attendants. One narrative declares that the arrow glanced from a boar, a second from a stag, a third from a tree. Even if we accept them, then either the power of prophecy lasted much longer than is commonly supposed, or, as we have said, the clergy were accessories to the murder;—we have no other choice. The last of these solutions is fatal to the common belief; and very few persons would, I suppose, venture upon the first. Nevertheless, the monk of Gloucester’s dream was not yet to be fulfilled. The hour was not yet at hand for England’s deliverance. As the Parliamentary party said in Charles the First’s time—“Things must become worse before they can mend.” England had, therefore, to undergo a tyranny for more than a century longer—till the evil became its own cure. Good was at length accomplished. Out of all the woe and wretchedness came the Bill of Rights and the Charta de Forestâ. [Illustration: View from Castle Malwood.] CHAPTER X. THE NORTHERN PART.—STONEY-CROSS, BRAMBLE HILL, FRITHAM, BENTLEY, EYEWORTH, SLODEN. [Illustration: View in Studley Wood.] If any one wishes to know the beauty of the Forest in autumn, let him see the view from the high ridge at Stoney-Cross. Here the air blows off the Wiltshire Downs finer and keener than anywhere else. Here, on all sides, stretch woods and moors. Here, in the latter end of August, the three heathers, one after another, cover every plain and holt with their crimson glory, mixed with the flashes of the dwarf furze. And a little later the maples are dyed, yellow and russet, by the autumn rains, and the beeches are scorched to a fiery red with the first frost, and the oaks renew, but deeper and more gloriously, the golden lights of spring, till the great woods of Prior’s Acre and Daneshill burn with colour; every gleam of sunshine, and every passing shadow, touching them with fresher and stranger beauty. To the east, about two miles along the Southampton Road, lies the village of Cadenham, famous for its oak, which, like the Glastonbury thorn, buds on Christmas Eve. The popular tradition in the neighbourhood runs, that, as the weather is harder, it shows more leaves, and, refusing the present chronology, only buds on Old Christmas night. As in most things, there is some little truth in the story. Doubtless, in some of the mild winters which visit Hampshire, the tree shows a few buds, as at that time I have seen others do in various parts of the Forest. Of course, they are all nipped by the first approach of severe weather, which, however, seldom happens on the warm south-west coast till the new year.