LITTLECOTE 173 



Gaunt, the town's benefjictor. All the townspeople 

 seem satisfied with their clay's carnival, save, perhaps, 

 a crooniog old burgher, who may occasionally be 

 heard to extol the good old days when the punch was 

 strong and the newly- elected officers went home in 

 wheelbarrows. 



XXIX 



From the everyday respectable duluess of Hunger- 

 ford itself we will pass to the exciting scandals which 

 make up much of the story of Littlecote, that gloomy 

 and romantic Tudor mansion, which has become 

 famous (or infamous, if you will have it so) through 

 the crimes and debaucheries of Will Darell, There 

 are two ways of reaching Littlecote from the Bath 

 Road. The most obvious way is by turning to the 

 right when in the midst of Hungerford town ; the 

 other, which is the more rural, is by a lane a mile 

 further down the road. Either will bring the 

 traveller to that secluded spot in the course of three 

 and a half miles. 



It stands, that hoary pile, in a wide and well- 

 wooded park, sheltered beneath the swelling Wiltshire 

 downs and close beside the gentle Kennet, wdiose 

 stream has been fruitful of trout ever since " trouts 

 (as our ancestors quaintly called them, in the plural) 

 were angled for. Littlecote, as we now see it, was built 

 by the Darells in the closing years of the fifteenth 

 century, in whose early years it had passed from the 

 Colston family by the marriage of the heiress of the 



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