, to the
south-east, the Devil's Jumps, three little squat, conical hills whose
very oddity is one of their attractions. They edge the horizon like
inverted pudding bowls covered with bracken, and with bell-heather
kindling to crimson in the July sunlight.

[Illustration: _Bridge at Tilford._]

July is the month in which to visit Frensham Little Pond. It was an
accident which first showed me the pond as it ought to be seen, and as
few see it. I had been watching a number of herons through my glasses;
one of them eyeing me discontentedly from the reeds on a southern arm of
the water, and three more flapping majestically over the trees,
apparently dropping suddenly down into the valley of the Wey. Trying to
take a short cut to the stream I missed my way among the woodland rides,
and suddenly found myself again on the edge of the pond. It was worth
making the mistake. The northern corner of the pond by the little
boathouse is one sheet of white waterlilies. The corner runs into a
rough triangle, with two sides fifty yards in length and a base of
perhaps thirty yards. There must be nearly a thousand square yards of
lilies, and from five to ten lilies to the yard, green buds, opening
blossoms, and great white cups and gold-centred chalices, wet and
swaying in the wind. Through all the summer those lilies flower, and
there cannot be as many people see them as there are lilies.
Fortunately, it would be difficult to find them unless you were walking:
you could not drive a motor-car or ride a bicycle down those sandy
lanes, and nobody on foot would pick the lilies.

To walk from Frensham Little Pond over Tilford Common to Tilford is to
traverse some of the wildest and freshest commonland in Surrey. For some
distance from the northern corner of the pond the way runs through
woodland, crossed and recrossed by so many sandy paths that it is a good
deal easier to get lost than to find the high road running into Tilford
from the south. It is worth while getting lost, for that matter, if only
to realise the wildness of the place; though it would perhaps be better
to choose daytime for the business, for there are some awkward-looking,
though perhaps not dangerous, bogs on the lower ground near the Wey.
This lower ground, by the way, is a wonderful place for rabbits. You
come suddenly out from the wood on the border of a reedy field, and see
dozens of scampering bodies cleaving paths through the shaking rushes.
Now and then a rabbit,