doorways; pigeons nest on the window-ledges and clatter like
frightened genii out over the field.

Above Moor Park, a landmark for miles round, Crooksbury Hill lifts like
a dark pyramid. Crooksbury Hill has a dozen different wardrobes. You may
wake to find her grey in the morning, you may leave her behind you
grey-green with the sun full on her flank, you may turn at noon to find
the sun lighting her deep emerald; she is sunniest and hottest in a
shining blue; and in the evening with the setting sun behind her she
cloaks herself in purple and black as if her pines belonged to Scotland.
She cannot see so far as Chanctonbury Ring, which is the watching
comrade of all walkers in the country of the South Downs, and she has
not the height of Leith Hill or Hindhead; but she is the grave and
constant companion of all travellers for many miles round her, and
measures for them the angle of the sun or the slope of the stars, as do
all good landmarks for those who love a landmark like a friend.

[Illustration: _A Dip in the Hog's Back._]

CHAPTER V

THE HOG'S BACK

Whitewaysend.--Tongham.--A carillon of
sheep-bells.--Timber-carting.--Falling on board a
transport.--Cottages under the Hog's Back.--Puttenham. The Maypole
at Compton.--The two-storied sanctuary.--A great
picture.--Bird-baths.--Swarming bees.--The Hog's Back; a noble
highway.

If any of the pilgrims from Farnham were drawn aside down the banks of
the Wey to the hospitality of Waverley Abbey, they probably rejoined the
rest at the foot of the Hog's Back, perhaps near Whitewaysend. That is a
name with some meaning, for here first the road from Farnham runs up on
to the great chalk ridge which traverses the county from west to east.
The break in the colour of the roads under the ridge is from bright
yellow sand to staring white, but the full white does not begin until
the road is almost at its highest level, at the cross-roads above
Tongham.

Tongham is the only village between Farnham and Guildford north of the
Hog's Back and near the ridge, and though there is little in it for
antiquarians, the pretty little white inn and the oasthouses have often
attracted painters, and the approach to the village from the south is
by a road pillared and canopied with lofty elms. The churchyard holds a
curious structure. A slender oak tower, recently erected as a memorial,
stands apart from the church, riveted to the ground with iron struts,
an