48 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



land. Yet another is at Stone Street, very small, a few 

 oaks up to their knees in blackthorn, gorse and bramble, 

 with dusty edge and the hum of the telegraph wire for 

 a song. 



After the little common and long meadows, oak and ash, 



an old stone house with seven hundred years of history 



quiet within its walls and dark tiles — its cedar and yew 



and pine, its daisied grass, its dark water and swans — 



the four oast cones opposite, all taste more exquisitely. 



How goodly are the names hereabout! — Dinas Dene, the 



coombe in which the old house stands; Balk Shaw, Cream 



Crox, Dicky May's Field, Ivy Hatch, Lady Lands, 



Lady's Wood, Upper and Lower Robsacks, Obram 



Wood, Ruffats, Styant's Mead, the Shode, and, of course, 



a Starvecrow. Almost due west goes one of the best of 



footpaths past hop garden, corn, currant plantations, rough 



copses, with glimpses of the immense Weald to the east, 



its trees massed like thirty miles of wood, having sky 



and cloud over its horizon as if over sea, and southward 



the wild ridge of Ashdown. Then the path enters tall 



woods of ash and oak, boulder-strewn among their 



anemone and primrose, bluebell and dog's mercury, and 



emerges in a steep lane at the top of which are five cowled 



oast houses among cherry blossom and under black firs. 



Beyond there is a hollow winding vale of meadow and 



corn, its sides clothed in oak, hazel and thorn, revealing 



primroses between. Woods shut it away from the road 



and from all houses but the farm above one end. A few 



cattle graze there, and the sun comes through the sloping 



woods and makes the grass golden or pale. 



Then the North Downs come in sight, above a church 



