92 SURREY SCENES 



a pebble, and the gleam of a pool seen forty feet 

 below, were the first evidence to the writer that 

 he had chanced on one of the beautiful chains of 

 ponds which form the sources of the river Wey. 

 Narrow peninsulas of sound turf jut out from either 

 side of the glen, washed by the streamlet whose ripple 

 was heard above. On one of these stands the game- 

 keeper's cottage, and below it lies the pool. Trout, 

 and not game, are the main objects of the keeper's 

 care, and a jay sat flirting its tail and screaming its 

 double note on a pine just opposite the house. The 

 pool itself was a type of hundreds among the Surrey 

 coombs. The streamlet, which enters at the head, 

 runs straight and deep for a few yards with a rapid 

 current. Feathery swamp-grass, tall skeletons of 

 thistles and of willow-herb, and clusters of bright- 

 green rushes, half-smothered in a russet snow of oak- 

 leaves, fringe the banks ; and where the morning 

 sun falls, blunt-toothed fronds of oak-fern and young 

 hollies sprout. Then the stream forks, and a miniature 

 delta forms, covered with a tall growth of bulrushes. 

 Below the delta stretches the broad, dark pool ; pure, 

 clear, and shallow, with sandy bottom strewn with 

 fallen leaves, and hungry trout cruising up and down 

 in the water made clear as crystal by a touch of 

 November frost. Grey-stemmed, yellow-leaved, twisted 

 oak, and dark and shining hollies fringe the sunny 

 side, and on the shaded bank a line of weeping- 

 birches dips into the pool. All is bright, clear, and 

 clean, void of clay or mud or rottenness ; even the 



