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Telegrams, Thorpe, Surrey.
Telephone, 13 Chertsey.
Station & Parcels, Egham.

Eastley End,
Thorpe,
Chertsey.

18 August 1931.

Dear Buchan.

I hope without being tedious I may say how
much I have enjoyed your recent historical
romance, and how I appreciated the various characters
and the charm of the woodland scenes in which they
appear.

I wonder if you will think me pedantic
if I say that for sometime I was puzzled by a
haunting parallel to the title of your work, and that
at last I have recalled it. Do you remember in
the Crito - at the beginning of it - when Crito went
to see Socrates in prison - it was ὄρθρος βαθύς -
deep twilight literally, but it was really deep dawn,
when the sky was still dark. Something of this kind I
feel fits your beautiful title which pervades the
whole book.

I am so glad you published that striking and eloquent
language of Chief Justice Crewe, when in 1625 he delivered
judgment concerning the Earldom of Oxford, to which claim
was made by Robert de Vere, and Bertie L^d. Willoughby
d'Eresby, ancestor of the present Earl of Lindsey & Abingdon.