These were
apt to find utterance after his attendance upon the ministrations of
the Vicar, an estimable man with inclinations towards a picturesque
ritual, which he gallantly kept down as far as he could out of
deference to East Anglian tradition. Professor Parkins, one of whose principal characteristics was pluck,
spent the greater part of the day following his arrival at Burnstow in
what he had called improving his game, in company with this Colonel
Wilson: and during the afternoon—whether the process of improvement
were to blame or not, I am not sure—the Colonel’s demeanour assumed a
colouring so lurid that even Parkins jibbed at the thought of walking
home with him from the links. He determined, after a short and furtive
look at that bristling moustache and those incarnadined features, that
it would be wiser to allow the influences of tea and tobacco to do what
they could with the Colonel before the dinner-hour should render a
meeting inevitable. “I might walk home tonight along the beach,” he reflected—“yes, and
take a look—there will be light enough for that—at the ruins of which
Disney was talking. I don’t exactly know where they are, by the way;
but I expect I can hardly help stumbling on them.”

This he accomplished, I may say, in the most literal sense, for in
picking his way from the links to the shingle beach his foot caught,
partly in a gorse-root and partly in a biggish stone, and over he went. When he got up and surveyed his surroundings, he found himself in a
patch of somewhat broken ground covered with small depressions and
mounds. These latter, when he came to examine them, proved to be simply
masses of flints embedded in mortar and grown over with turf. He must,
he quite rightly concluded, be on the site of the preceptory he had
promised to look at. It seemed not unlikely to reward the spade of the
explorer; enough of the foundations was probably left at no great depth
to throw a good deal of light on the general plan. He remembered
vaguely that the Templars, to whom this site had belonged, were in the
habit of building round churches, and he thought a particular series of
the humps or mounds near him did appear to be arranged in something of
a circular form. Few people can resist the temptation to try a little
amateur research in a department quite outside their own, if only for
the satisfaction of showing how successful they would have been had
they only taken it up seriously. Our Professor, however, if he felt
something of this mean desire, was also truly anxious to oblige Mr
Disney. So he paced with care the circular area he had noticed, and
wrote down its rough dimensions in his pocket-book. Then he proceeded
to examine an oblong eminence which lay east of the centre of the
circle, and seemed to his thinking likely to be the base of a platform
or altar. At one end of it, the northern, a patch of the turf was
gone—removed by some boy or other creature _feraæ naturæ_. It might, he
thought, be as well to probe the soil here for evidences of masonry,
and he took out his knife and began scraping away the earth. And now
followed another little discovery: a portion of soil fell inward as he
scraped, and disclosed a small cavity. He lighted one match after
another to help him to see of what nature the hole was, but the wind
was too strong for them all. By tapping and scratching the sides with
his knife, however, he was able to make out that it must be an
artificial hole in masonry. It was rectangular, and the sides, top, and
bottom, if not actually plastered, were smooth and regular. Of course
it was empty. No! As he withdrew the knife he heard a metallic clink,
and when he introduced his hand it met with a cylindrical object lying
on the floor of the hole. Naturally enough, he picked it up, and when
he brought it into the light, now fast fading, he could see that it,
too, was of man’s making—a metal tube about four inches long, and
evidently of some considerable age. By the time Parkins had made sure that there was nothing else in this
odd receptacle, it was too late and too dark for him to think of
undertaking any further search. What he had done had proved so
unexpectedly interesting that he determined to sacrifice a little more
of the daylight on the morrow to archaeology. The object which he now
had safe in his pocket was bound to be of some slight value at least,
he felt sure. Bleak and solemn was the view on which he took a last look before
starting homeward. A faint yellow light in the west showed the links,
on which a few figures moving towards the club-house were still
visible, the squat martello tower, the lights of Aldsey village, the
pale ribbon of sands intersected at intervals by black wooden
groynings, the dim and murmuring sea. The wind was bitter from the
north, but was at his back when he set out for the Globe. He quickly
rattled and clashed through the shingle and gained the sand, upon
which, but for the groynings which had to be got over every few yards,
the going was both good and quiet. One last look behind, to measure the
distance he had made since leaving the ruined Templars’ church, showed
him a prospect of company on his walk, in the shape of a rather
indistinct personage, who seemed to be making great efforts to catch up
with him, but made little, if any, progress. I mean that there was an
appearance of running about his movements, but that the distance
between him and Parkins did not seem materially to lessen. So, at
least, Parkins thought, and decided that he almost certainly did not
know him, and that it would be absurd to wait until he came up. For all
that, company, he began to think, would really be very welcome on that
lonely shore, if only you could choose your companion. In his
unenlightened days he had read of meetings in such places which even
now would hardly bear thinking of. He went on thinking of them,
however, until he reached home, and particularly of one which catches
most people’s fancy at some time of their childhood. “Now I saw in my
dream that Christian had gone but a very little way when he saw a foul
fiend coming over the field to meet him.” “What should I do now,” he
thought, “if I looked back and caught sight of a black figure sharply
defined against the yellow sky, and saw that it had horns and wings? I
wonder whether I should stand or run for it. Luckily, the gentleman
behind is not of that kind, and he seems to be about as far off now as
when I saw him first. Well, at this rate, he won’t get his dinner as
soon as I shall; and, dear me! it’s within a quarter of an hour of the
time now. I must run!”

Parkins had, in fact, very little time for dressing. When he met the
Colonel at dinner, Peace—or as much of her as that gentleman could
manage—reigned once more in the military bosom; nor was she put to
flight in the hours of bridge that followed dinner, for Parkins was a
more than respectable player.