12 IN HAMPSHIRE HIGHLANDS 



is passed, and soon one enters upon a wild and 

 remote corner of the county. Here again the 

 beautiful redstart is quite at home, flying in and 

 out of the thin old hedge in front of the intruder, 

 more inquisitive, it would seem, than alarmed. 

 On the left-hand side of the road the land is more 

 or less cultivated, but on the right the great 

 rolling downs have their way, forming in at 

 least one instance something like an immense 

 natural amphitheatre within the valley. Alter- 

 nately waves of sun and shadow swept over this 

 land when I last saw it one day in late summer, 

 and between Hurstbourne Tarrant, the Up- 

 husband of the earlier part of the century, and 

 the remote and well-named village of Combe, I 

 met but one small party of labourers who were 

 bringing home the last loads of the bountiful 

 harvest of 1898: from Hurstbourne to the foot 

 of the hill that leads up to Combe Church and the 

 old dismantled manor-house a distance of some 

 four miles and a half not another soul. Combe 

 Church and churchyard, which lie a little apart 

 from the village in the hollow, are worth visiting. 

 The two aged yews in the churchyard, in their 

 ' stubborn hardihood,' are fine specimens of a tree 



