“The Black Abbot, sir. Gill, the gamekeeper up at Long Meadow Cottage, saw him at four o’clock this morning walking through the Long Meadow. By the time Gill got his gun he’d vanished.”

“And what was the Black Abbot doing in the Long Meadow?” asked Dick sardonically. “Picking buttercups?”

“It’s rather late for buttercups, sir,” said the unimaginative groom. “But Gill says that if he’d had his gun he’d have taken a pot at him.”

“And there would have been an inquest, and the best Gill could hope for would be a verdict of justifiable homicide. You can tell Gill from me that the Black Abbot is to be tackled – by hand! A live ghost will tell us a lot, but a dead ghost is practically useless as an information bureau.”

He cantered through the home meadows, behind the house, and, avoiding the abbey ruins, rejoined the winding Ravensrill. Setting his horse at a walk, he followed the bank of the stream, his mind so completely occupied by the events of the past twenty-four hours that he would have passed unnoticed the girl who was lying face downward on the opposite bank.

It was a glorious morning, warm and sunny. The sky was an unblemished blue, the world was bathed in yellow radiance. Overhead, a flight of migratory birds were moving southward, and the faint chatter of them came down to him.

“Good morning, Sir Galahad!”

He reined in his horse and looked round in bewilderment. Presently he saw her.

“Good morning, Guinevere!” he said, and, turning his horse’s head to the stream, he came gingerly down the slope and sent the reluctant hack into the water.

“Be careful!”

“There’s a ford here,” he said. “In fact,” as he emerged with his horse’s girth dripping, “this is the original Chelford. Knights in armour, and probably Britons in feathers and woad, have crossed Ravensrill at this spot. What on earth are you doing?”

He slipped to the ground, dropping the reins, and allowed his mount to forage at will. She was lying now at full length, but resting on her elbows. Immediately beneath her face was a slab of rock in the centre of which a hole some eighteen inches in diameter had been worn. When he saw this he laughed softly.

“Leslie, what questions have you to ask the Wishing Well?”

Why it was called the Wishing Well he had never learnt – no water had ever risen from that deep cavity, which, by some freak of nature, extended to unplumbed depths. Yet here, generations of country swains had come to prostrate themselves and bellow into the cavity the burden of their hearts’ desire. And tradition had it that the well answered them clearly and intelligibly.

“I’m asking about me.” Her face was pink, probably from her unusual posture.

“And what said the well?” he mocked.

She scrambled to her knees and pushed back the hair from her forehead.