gipsy--Bilberries on
Pitch Hill--Lost in Hurst Wood--Farley Heath--Mr. Watson's
poem--Blackheath well named.

Cranleigh lies on the edge of the Fold country, neither in it nor of it.
In the Fold country the villages are set deep in woodlands and grass
fields, and the railway runs too far away to bring the slate for the
villas. But the railway runs through Cranleigh and stops there, and so
does the builder. The fields and woods are being "developed." But in the
heart of the village there is a touch of what is old and quiet. A
strange, towering figure of a clipped yew stands up in the middle of a
small garden, whether most like a peacock on a pillar, or a colossal
coffee-pot, I cannot determine. A wheelwright's yard is near by--one of
the best of all sights of any country village. Farm carts and their
wheels, and big spokes and shavings of white wood give as full a notion
of solid, strong outdoor work as the forge and the rickyard, and no
village is quite a country village without the three.

Two manors, Vachery and Knowle, have chapels in the church, which is
cruciform; but the Vachery chapel is seated for ordinary churchgoers.
The Knowle chapel is separated off by a fine fifteenth-century screen.
But the chief beauty of Cranleigh Church is the great sense of breadth
and light which you get from the size of the nave and the chancel arch.
The broad spaces and the massive Norman pillars set an air of strength
and quiet in the place that belongs alone to noble churches.

Of Vachery Manor one may hear little; of Vachery Pond every troutfisher
knows something. The maps mark a superb sheet of water, nearly a mile
long, and, two or three times, travelling from Guildford or Horsham, I
have tried to catch a glimpse of the water from the railway, but in
vain. When at last I stood on the edge of the water, the reason was
clear enough; the pond is surrounded by banks covered with trees. A
right of way runs from the road near Cranleigh round the south of the
pond to Baynards beyond, and the pond lies near the right of way, a
grass-edged road alive with rabbits. I saw the pond first on a July
morning; the drying leaves showed that earlier in the year the road to
it ran between carpets of primroses. The water lay without a ripple in
the sun; at the far side, two crested grebes swam low, like submarines,
diving for fish to feed their young, who asked for food without
weariness and without ceasing, and received it with excit