AN ENGLISH SQUIRE 43 



who built the oldest part of it, in the days of the 

 Tudors, had a habit of coming down like rats to the 

 water. But the suspicion of damp that hangs about 

 the little river and the lake fosters timber and shrub- 

 beries into the richer luxuriance, and gives a brilliant 

 freshness to the grass and the foliage. The house is 

 a long and rather rambling building, where you have 

 never far to mount to your room, though you may 

 have a long way to walk along the corridors and up 

 the quaint oak staircases ; and the mullioned windows, 

 with their lozenged lattices, are embowered in their 

 masses of roses and creepers. The doors open on a 

 broad terrace looking over the velvet lawns and varie- 

 gated flower-beds to the undulations of the beautifully 

 timbered park, that seems to shade away imperceptibly 

 into the woodlands beyond. Scattered clumps of 

 venerable trees throw out their gnarled boughs over 

 great beds of bracken and bramble, where the fallow 

 deer stand buried to their heads and horns ; while 

 there are groups of cattle that are scarcely less orna- 

 mental. Everything bears evidence of careful over- 

 looking and liberal expenditure. The oaken fences of 

 the park are kept up to perfection ; and there is hardly 

 a weed or a rut on the broad gravel drives, which pro- 

 vide easy and well-paid employment for half the old 

 people in the village. The village itself is a show one. 

 A low-aisled Norman church, with ivy-grown tower 

 and moss-covered lich-gate, and superannuated yews 

 all rent and torn by time, scattered about among the 

 simple tombstones ; a rectory half hidden out of sight 



