desertion promised, if his life was
spared, he would destroy this serpent. Accordingly he took his dog with
him. A fierce battle ensued, the dog fastened him and the soldier killed
it with his bayonet in a field belonging to the glebe called Deadacre."
According to the magazine's correspondent, an "ancient piece of carving
in wood" representing this frightful struggle, had been "preserved for
many years in the parsonage house."

Between the two Clandons, West and East, the road runs by what is surely
the finest ploughland in the county. A single field of over a hundred
acres stretches up the side of the down to a belt of firs--a field for
Cincinnatus himself to plough. I remember standing to stare at that
great reach of shining stubble and furrow when first I saw it from the
road on a day of marvellous February sunlight. Farm labourers were
topping and tailing turnips two hundred yards away; partridges newly
paired whirred up from the roadside; beyond the white stubbleland lay
the pines of Netley Heath, a thin line of palest blue; a hundred larks
filled the sky with singing, and I heard suddenly behind me the
impetuous thrill of a chaffinch, that most summery of carols. The
ploughland is Lord Onslow's, and it must need a Minister of Agriculture
to look after it.

East Clandon lies under that broad ploughland, a mile from Clandon Park.
Everything in East Clandon is what it ought to be, and everybody does
what he ought to do. The timbered cottages are old and quiet; the barn
roofs by the churchyard are long and lichened; the churchyard is
bordered by a thick holly hedge, and about its graves, little clipped
yew-trees stand like chessmen, perhaps meant to suggest a text; the
cottage gardens are full of simple flowers and fruit-trees, and the
cottagers work in them as if it were the best work to do, which
doubtless it is. There could not be a happier looking village. One
building only in the village knows, or shows, much suffering. At East
Clandon is the country branch of the Queen Alexandra Nursing Home for
children with hip disease. In fine weather the children lie in their
cots on the verandah, like broken toys, and wave happily from their red
blankets to passers-by.

In the days of Charles I East Clandon boasted a poet. He was Thomas
Goffe, a writer of tragedies, and most unhappily married. Aubrey tells
the story:--

"His wife pretended to fall in love with him, by hearing of him
preach: upon which, said o