Legends are not rare in this neighbourhood. Indeed, along the by-road in the direction of Moulton one reaches Folly Hill, the crest of the downs can be seen from here, with a fragment of wall and a clump of beech-trees on its summit, and a story of its own in the making. Here, in fact, we are peculiarly fortunate, for on Folly Hill it is possible to note the genesis of a legend and to record it ere time has evolved a story, full-blown and mysterious, out of very matter-of-fact materials. A story of sorts is, indeed, already current in Newmarket, where the enquiring stranger after things in general can obtain some finely inaccurate information as to what he may expect to see on Folly Hill, or “God’s Evil,” as it is alternatively known. With this he is prepared to find a stone pillar in a wood, the sole relic of a house built, at some time unspecified, by “a man almost a millionaire,” unfortunately unnamed, but with the blackest of reputations. There is not really (it may at once be said) any such pillar, but the gable-end of a ruined old red-brick house stands up against the sky on the hill-top, and is known to the farmer of Trinity Hall Farm, on which it stands, as “the Pilgrim.” The ploughmen know the beech clump on the hill as “Cobbler’s Bush,” because, according to their tale, “a ole cobbler what used to mend boots lived there. There’s a ole tree there what nobody mustn’t touch, because he planted it.” “And what is that old building on the hill-top?” “That’s a ole rewing they calls the Barks. Nobody mustn’t touch it.” “Not touch it; why not?” “Because the soldiers come to look at it.” At that explanation a flood of light is thrown upon the name of “Barks.” It is the local pronunciation of “Barracks,” and that name comes, of course, from the “soldiers” who go to look at it. Who are those soldiers? Merely those who have at some time or other accompanied a surveying party of the Ordnance Survey, for map-making purposes. No doubt a fine gory embattled legend will be built on this some day, probably with Cromwell, that arch-villain of popular imagination, as the moving figure in it.