“‘When I regained my senses I found I was prone on the ground and my host and some others were standing round me conversing in low tones. They helped me back to the Inn, no one saying a word. I left early the next morning, that stench still lingering in my nostrils and the host seeming to avoid talk with me. All this is the truth as I have set it down.’ “And that’s what happened to Simon,” said Markes. “A curious story,” said Mr. Baxter. “Far more curious than uncommon. I could find you a dozen almost identical experiences. Almost certainly the work of our friends the Druids, whoever they were! A mound and an oak--such places are death traps. Not all the time; the peril is periodic, why, we don’t know. But our friend Simon was very lucky to be able to leave ‘early next morning,’ though he didn’t escape altogether. The rest of his book reads like a coda to this adventure. Bad dreams, depression and always that smell in his nose. He died within a year or two. And now tell me exactly what happened at Duncaster, for I gather it is still a disturbed area.” So Mr. Baxter told him the curious events connected with the new seventeenth. A PEG ON WHICH TO HANG---- A PEG ON WHICH TO HANG---- Before telling Mr. James Partridge’s displeasing experience at the Beach Hotel, Littleford, it may be as well to establish that gentleman’s credentials by briefly describing him. He is a writer by habit and inclination, though being the fruit of rich but honest parents, he is not in the paralysing position of being compelled to rely on his pen, ink and paper for his means of subsistence. He has made a nice little reputation as an essayist of the lightest sort. He has examined the surface of things, of persons and of life in general with a tolerant, mildly cynical assiduity. Below that surface he very sensibly refrains from looking. It is not in his character. He takes some homely and familiar topic--let us say, a Number 11e Omnibus--as his text, and manages to coax from a ruminating survey of its cargo and its route two thousand bland and gently ironic words of amusement without pedantry, for which he receives 25 guineas from a high-brow weekly. Though on the whole a modest man, he believes in his heart of hearts that he does this sort of thing better than “Y.Y.”--an opinion not widely shared, and least of all by Mr. Robert Lynd. Being a journalist, you will naturally suspect that he invented this narrative and foisted it on his credulous acquaintance. If so, you will do him a serious injustice, for he has no gift for fiction and, indeed, this is not the type of narrative he would care to pursue if he had. You may take it for granted then that his version of what happened on the night of March 23rd, 1924, at the Royal Hotel, Littleford, is plain, untouched-up fact.