HOW THE HOUSE WAS BUILT 5 



growing fifteen years ago a mile and a half away, on 

 the outer edge of a fir wood just above a hazel-fringed 

 hollow lane, whose steep sandy sides, here and there 

 level enough to bear a patch of vegetation, grew tall 

 Bracken and great Foxgloves, and the finest wild Can- 

 terbury Bells I ever saw. At the top of the western 

 bank, their bases hidden in cool beds of tall Fern in 

 summer, and clothed in its half-fallen warmth of rusty 

 comfort in winter, and in spring-time standing on 

 their carpet of blue wild Hyacinth, were these tall oaks ; 

 one or two of their fellows still remain. Often driving 

 up the lane from early childhood I used to see these 

 great grey trees, in tAvilight looking almost ghostly 

 against the darkly-mysterious background of the 

 sombre firs. And I remember ahvays thinking how 

 straight and tall they looked, for these sandy hills do 

 not readily grow such great oaks as are found in the 

 clay weald a few miles to the south and at the foot of 

 our warm-soiled hills. But I am glad to know that 

 my beams are these same old friends, and that the 

 pleasure that I had in watching them green and grow- 

 ing is not destroyed but only changed as I see them 

 stretching above me as grand beams of solid English 

 oak. 



The memory of a curious incident of many years 

 ago that I am quite unable to account for, and never 

 can forget, belongs to this same lane ; only a few yards 

 further down and Avithin sight of the lowest of the 

 oaks. 



