cat; it generally went with them. What was that noise in the tent? That
was a pair of kittens; yes, the boys liked to have them; they generally
had kittens. One of them picked up the cat, upside down, with obvious
affection.

Chobham itself lies five or six miles away from Chobham Ridges, south by
a mile even from Chobham Common. Long before you come into the village
you catch sight of the church spire, with its lead covering washed by
the rain to a brilliant whiteness. Rising above the red tiles of the
village into a blue sky it looks as if it had been painted yesterday.
The church has been largely rebuilt, but has some fine Norman pillars,
and contains besides the tomb of the great Nicholas Heath, once
Archbishop of York. He was Lord Chancellor of England under Queen Mary,
and a sound Papist. When Elizabeth came to the throne he resigned, but
remained "so much in the Queen's Bon-graces," as an old writer puts it,
"that she visited him once a Year through his Life, believing his
mistaken Piety sincere."

Two miles behind the Ridges is Frimley, with an old inn and a church to
which Americans come often. Bret Harte lived his last years at a house
on the hillside near, and is buried in the churchyard. But the Bret
Harte of _The Luck of Roaring Camp_ and _The Heathen Chinee_ does not,
of course, belong to Frimley; those were earlier successes which he
never equalled later.

The village politician ought to flourish at Frimley. On a board near the
church I found a warning against a crime which must be becoming rarer.
"Notice is hereby given that any person or persons found damaging the
parish pump will be prosecuted," it ran, but the pump I did not find.

In Aubrey's day, Frimley had the gentlest of hermits. He fled from the
changes and chances of the Parliamentary wars, and led the simplest
possible life in the wilds. Aubrey describes his cottage:

"At the end of this Hundred, I must not forget my noble friend, Mr.
Charles Howard's Cottage of Retirement (which he called his Castle),
which lay in the middle of a vast Heathy Country, far from any Road
or Village in the _Hope_ of a healthy Mountain, where, in the
troublesome Times, he withdrew from the wicked World, and enjoyed
himself here, where he had only one Floor, his little Dining Room, a
Kitchen, a Chapel, and a Laboratory. His utensils were all of Wood
or Earth; near him were about half a Dozen Cottages more, on whom he
shew'd