the
very eaves of a cottage, and the path goes by the door--across a narrow
meadow where deep and broad trenches, green now, show where ancient
stews or fishponds existed, and then through a farmyard into a lane.
Tall poplars rise on either hand, but there seem to be no houses; they
stand, in fact, a field's breadth back from the lane, and are approached
by footpaths that every few yards necessitate a stile in the hedge.

When a low thatched farmhouse does abut upon the way, the blank white
wall of the rear part faces the road, and the front door opens on
precisely the other side. Hard by is a row of beehives. Though the
modern hives are at once more economical and humane, they have not the
old associations that cling about the straw domes topped with broken
earthenware to shoot off the heavy downfall of a thunderstorm.

Everywhere the apple-bloom; the hum of bees; children sitting on the
green beside the road, their laps full of flowers; the song of finches;
and the low murmur of water that glides over flint and stone so shadowed
by plants and grasses that the sunbeams cannot reach and glisten on it.
Thus the straggling flower-strewn village stretches along beneath the
hill and rises up the slope, and the swallows wheel and twitter over the
gables where are their hereditary nesting-places. The lane ends on a
broad dusty road, and, opposite, a quiet thatched house of the larger
sort stands, endways to the street, with an open pitching before the
windows. There, too, the swallows' nests are crowded under the eaves,
flowers are trained against the wall, and in the garden stand the same
beautiful apple-trees. But within, the lower part of the windows--that
have recess seats--are guarded by horizontal rods of iron, polished by
the backs of many men. It is an inn, and the rods are to save the panes
from the impact of an excited toper's arm.

The talk to-day, as the brown brandy, which the paler cognac has not yet
superseded, is consumed, and the fumes of coarse tobacco and the smell
of spilt beer and the faint sickly odour of evaporating spirits
overpower the flowers, is of horses. The stable lads from the training
stables far up on the Downs drop in or call at the door without
dismounting. Once or twice in the day a tout calls and takes his 'grub,'
and scribbles a report in the little back parlour. Sporting papers,
beer-stained and thumb-marked, lie on the tables; framed portraits of
racers hang on the walls. Burly men, w