puzzled by the silence following the sound of the
invader's coming, sits and cocks up a pair of ears above the grass; his
head goes a little higher, his timorous eye catches yours, and the
greenery closes behind him.

Tilford to-day cannot be very different from the Tilford of the days of
Cobbett. It is a straggling little hamlet, lying about the triangle
formed by its cricket-green. The Wey runs halfway round the green, and
is crossed by two grey and ancient bridges. But the chief glory of
Tilford is its mighty oak, one of the greatest of English trees. Its age
is unknown, and perhaps would hardly be known if it were felled. It has
been claimed as "the oak at Kynghoc," mentioned in the charter given to
Waverley Abbey in 1128; but that oak is mentioned as standing on the
Abbeyland boundary, and the Tilford oak has never stood on the boundary.
These historic oaks make difficult problems. Wherever you find a great
tree, local legend gathers round it. Queen Elizabeth dined under it or
shot a stag under it; Charles II climbed in it; Wesley preached under
it; it is the boundary of the parish; it was the boundary of the
Abbeyland eight hundred years ago. But was it always, then, the greatest
tree for miles round? Eight hundred years ago, may there not have stood
another tree near where it stands to-day, as large or even larger?
Surely the traditions of one great tree pass, when the tree falls, to
its nearest great neighbour; but they pass so seldom, and so slowly,
that the villagers hardly note the change. Three generations are born
and die, and no villager living has seen the older greater oak; the
younger, slighter tree succeeds to its glories. Tilford's oak to-day is
called by all Tilford the King's Oak. On the old estate maps it is
Novel's Oak; Novel, perhaps, was a yeoman farmer.

[Illustration: _Between Tilford and Elstead._]

Cobbett made a curious mistake about the Tilford Oak. He and his son
were riding through Tilford to Farnham on an autumn day in 1822:--

"We veered a little to the left after we came to Tilford, at which
place on the Green we stopped to look at an _oak tree_, which, when
I was a little boy, was but a very little tree, comparatively, and
which is now, take it altogether, by far the finest tree that I ever
saw in my life. The stem or shaft is short; that is to say, it is
short before you come to the first limbs; but it is full _thirty
feet round_, at about eight or te