“Well, well! never mind,” he said; “the fact is, I live a good deal in those old times. I’ve been up here, and sat and gone over the fight so often, that when I get on the hill-side, I think I saw it all. In the autumn evenings at twilight, when the southwest wind blows wild, and the mist comes drifting over the broad downs, many a time, as I have stolen down the silent hill-side, I have seen the weird old Pagan king and the five earls, sitting one on each of the giants’ seats, and looking mournfully out over the Vale, waiting--waiting--waiting for a thousand years, all but fourteen. It’s a long time, sir, a long time; but you and I may have to wait for a longer over the scene of some of our doings. Who can say?” I really now did begin to think the old gentleman a little crazy, so I said nothing. Presently he went on in his old quiet voice:-- “There, now I have dismounted my hobby, and am sane again. I live in a wild, lonely part of the world down west, and for the last thirty years have read little else but the Bible, and books 200 years old and upwards. Every man has his madness--that’s mine--I don’t get a chance of letting it out once a-year. I have spent a very pleasant day with you, Sir; and if you ever come down to these parts again, and like to come on and see me, I shall be very glad. There is my name and address;” and he gave me his card, but he didn’t say that I might publish it. “Thank you, Sir,” said I, putting it into my pocket-book; “but I hope you will be up on the hill to-morrow?” “Yes, I shall just ride up,” he said, “to see how they have used my old friend; he wanted scouring sadly. The games I don’t much care about, though I’m glad they go on. But not one man in a thousand who will be on the hill to-morrow will know what the meaning of it all is; and that makes it a melancholy sight to me, Sir, on the whole.” “But what a pity,” said I, “that they are not told. It would interest everybody else, I’m sure, just as it has me. Why don’t you tell it then, Sir, in a book or a newspaper?” “Nobody would read my old-world stuff,” said he. “No: a man must understand and be in sympathy with his own generation to coax it into caring about an older one. But now I must be going. If you have time to walk down to that little clump of trees over there, towards Æthelred’s camp, you will find an old Druidical cromlech well worth examining. It is called Wayland Smith’s cave. Walter Scott, who should have known better, says that the Danish king killed at Ashdown was buried there. He was no more buried there than in Westminster Abbey. Good-bye.” And so he put his cob into a canter, and went off along the Ridgeway.