ed splashings.
Under the bank danced a cotillon of tiny dragon-flies, needles of
turquoise stuck suddenly on a reed, flitting aimlessly over the clear,
shadowed water. Just in such sunlight, though later in the year, those
two glorious guests visited Vachery Pond in September, 1904. A pair of
ospreys, on their journey south for the winter, made the water their
home for a few days, to the consternation of the wildfowl and the
delight of the other troutfishers. One of them, writing to the _Field_
at the time, described the way in which the bird he saw fished the
water. It would sail up and down over the lake and then drop into the
water with a resounding crash, rising always with a trout in its talons.
But the visit did not last long. A keeper shot the male bird, and its
mate--ospreys pair for life--went on to the south alone.

On the other side of Vachery Pond is Baynards, one of the historic
Surrey houses, and a fine relic of Tudor days. Baynards once was the
home of Margaret Roper, daughter of Sir Thomas More, and the story goes
that after her father's execution she brought his head to Baynards.
Perhaps that started the Baynards' ghost. Legend plays with the aura of
Baynards as of Loseley. Once a year the two ghosts meet: the Baynards
ghost dines at Loseley, and the Loseley ghost pays back the visit next
year at Baynards.

[Illustration: _At Ewhurst._]

North-east of Baynards an old Roman road runs from Rowhook on the Stane
Street in Sussex towards Farley Heath, where there was a Roman camp.
The Roman road, now hardly traceable, cuts the road from Cranleigh near
Ewhurst. Ewhurst lives comfortably fifty years behind Cranleigh, and is
still, happily, what the late Louis Jennings called it in _Field Paths
and Green Lanes_, "a one-horse place." When Mr. Jennings was at Ewhurst
everybody was half-asleep. "At the post-office a woman and a girl turned
out in some consternation to look at me, thinking, perhaps, that I had a
letter concealed about me, and was about to post it, and thus overwhelm
them with work." Such a village would be desirable anywhere. But
Ewhurst, although it can be sleepy in the sunshine, as everything in the
country ought to be, has an eye for country business. At the door of the
post-office, when I was there on a hot day in July, a long-tailed sheep,
fat and woolly, cropped the grass. It was a pet lamb grown up,
apparently, and pleased to be patted. A cart drove up, and there was a
conversation which