WALK IN RURAL ENGLAND. 13 



church by his two churchwardens, who were 

 our biggest farmers, and they never opened 

 the church for three weeks after ! " Those 

 were the days, as Colonel Pedder says, " when 

 the souls of squires and farmers rotted in the 

 cradle of an easy conscience, and when the 

 country parson was expected to think more of 

 the hurdles than of the sheep." 



It was Sunday afternoon when I left 

 Coombe and took the rough valley road to 

 Hurstbourne Tarrant. There is very little 

 attempt at farming made along the whole 

 length of this fertile valley, and during the six 

 miles' walk I met not a soul save a John and 

 a Mary, who, with arms still interlocked^ seemed 

 astonished to see me. I passed only one 

 group of cottages, which formed the hamlet of 

 Netherton. I noticed that these few cottages 

 were numbered 146, 148, etc., in large metal 

 letters, as though they belonged to some 

 convict colony. 



"Why," I asked a cottager, "are your 

 cottages numbered, for there is no sign of a 

 street?" 



" That's Mr. 's notion," he answered, 



with a wry face. 



The new landlord apparently could not be 



