"While the stars come out and the night wind
Brings, up the stream,
Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea."
CHAPTER II
HAUNTED GLENS AND HOUSES
Warwick, July 6, 1888.—One night, many years ago[3] a brutal murder was done, at a lonely place on the highroad between Charlecote Park and Stratford-upon-Avon. The next morning the murdered man was found lying by the roadside, his mangled head resting in a small hole. The assassins were shortly afterward discovered, and they were hanged at Warwick. From that day to this the hole wherein the dead man's head reposed remains unchanged. No matter how often it may be filled, whether by the wash of heavy rains or by stones and leaves that wayfarers may happen to cast into it as they pass, it is soon found to be again empty. No one takes care of it. No one knows whether or by whom it is guarded. Fill it at nightfall and you will find it empty in the morning. That is the local belief and affirmation. This spot is two miles and a half north of Stratford and three-quarters of a mile from the gates of Charlecote Park. I looked at this hole one bright day in June and saw that it was empty. Nature, it is thought by the poets, abhors complicity with the concealment of crime, and brands with her curse the places that are linked with the shedding of blood. Hence the strong lines in Hood's poem of Eugene Aram:
"And a mighty wind had swept the leaves,