Well, when we had done about the weather, thinks I, “This is just the sort of gentleman to tell me what I want to know about the White Horse and all the rest of it,” and you’ll see as you go on that I never made a better guess in my life. So I got my note-book out quietly, so that he shouldn’t take much notice of what I was about, and began, “I suppose, Sir,” said I, “that it’s all right about Alfred, and that he really did cut out this figure after winning a great battle up here?” “Yes,” said he, “I think so myself, because there has always been a tradition in the country side that this was so. And where antiquaries differ, a tradition of this sort may always be pretty safely believed. Country folk hold on to such stories, and hand them down in a very curious manner; but you know, I dare say, that it is claimed by some as a Druidical, or at any rate a British monument, which would make it several hundred years older at least.” I didn’t know any thing about it, but why should I tell him so. “I shouldn’t like to think so, Sir,” said I, “because one wouldn’t care so much about it if it wasn’t made by the Saxons and their great king. The Druids don’t seem akin to us somehow; and then one would lose all about the great battle, which was certainly fought up here, wasn’t it, Sir?” “I have no doubt about it,” said he; “there are many signs of it--above all, graves enough to hold the harvest of many battles. You are lying on one.” “No! am I really, though?” said I, sitting up and looking at the ground; “how do you know?” “Well, it isn’t very hard when the eye gets used to them,” said he; “there’s another;” and he pointed to a small mound a few yards off, and just like the one I was sitting on. “That larger mound, too, down below, across the road, you were on it just now--” “Yes, Sir,” said I, interrupting him, and pointing at it, “Dragon’s Hill.” [Illustration] “Exactly so,” said he; “that’s another burial-place; a larger and grander affair, you see, than these. Probably a king or other very noble person is buried there.” “The people say, Sir, don’t they,” said I, “that St. George killed the Dragon there?” “They do,” said he, “and that his blood made a pool on the top, and ran down the steps on the other side, where the grass has never grown since. This is another curious instance of the tenacity of tradition; but here I think our good folk in the Vale have held on to the name, or a part of it, and forgotten the meaning, just as they have in the case of another village over there in Oxfordshire, the name of which is Stanton Harcourt.” “How was that, Sir?” said I, when he paused.