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196 KIPLING'S SUSSEX
a merry picnic, Chanctonbury Ring was then a lonely spot, imbued with terror of a wandering ghost—an ancient ghost with a long white beard, walking even in the afternoon, with its head bowed down, in search of something—a vain search of centuries. This long-sought treasure has now been found ; not by the ghost, however, but by a lucky stroke of the plough-share; and the spectral owner roves no more. He is supposed with all the assumption required to make a certainty, to have been a tenant of Chancton Manor imder Earl Gurth, the brother of Harold, and, being slain at Hastings, to have forgotten where his treasure lay."
The motor-bus from Worthing turns off on the London Road past Washington for Storrington, another secluded South Down village. In the church here is an inlaid slab commemorative of Henricus Wilshe, a priest, 1591.
That strange figure, Francis Thompson, was placed under the care of the monks at Storrington Priory. Here he renounced opium for some time and his brain cleared. One might almost say that Storrington was his spiritual birthplace, for his genius, welling up in an unbroken stream, passed into " The Ode of the Setting Sun," with its picture of the old monastery, " The Song of Hours," and the wonderful essay on Shelley, which was thrown back on his hands by the Dublin Review, and which was published in that journal after his death. In " Daisy " Storrington |
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