ild the little chapel
there for the secluded hamlet; and loving thought and care had gone to
making the place seemly and beautiful. The very stone of the wall, and
the beam of the roof cried out against the hard and untender usage that
had laid the sanctuary low. Here children had been baptized, tender
marriage vows plighted, and the dead laid to rest; and this was the
end. I turned away with a sense of deep sadness; the very sunshine
seemed blurred with a shadow of dreariness and shame.

Then I made my way, by a stony road, towards the manor-house; and
presently could see its gables at the end of a pleasant avenue of
limes; but no track led thither. The gate was wired up, and the drive
overgrown with grass. Soon, however, I found a farm-road which led up
to the house from the village. On the left of the manor lay prosperous
barns and byres, full of sleek pigs and busy crested fowls. The teams
came clanking home across the water-meadows. The house itself became
more and more beautiful as I approached. It was surrounded by a moat,
and here, close at hand, stood another ancient chapel, in seemly
repair. All round the house grew dense thickets of sprawling laurels,
which rose in luxuriance from the edge of the water. Then I crossed a
little bridge with a broken parapet; and in front of me stood the house
itself. I have seldom seen a more perfectly proportioned or
exquisitely coloured building. There were three gables in the front,
the central one holding a beautiful oriel window, with a fine oak door
below. The whole was built of a pale red brick, covered with a grey
lichen that cast a shimmering light over the front. Tall chimneys of
solid grace rose from a stone-shingled roof. The coigns, parapets and
mullions were all of a delicately-tinted orange stone. To the right
lay a big walled garden, full of flowers growing with careless
richness, the whole bounded by the moat, and looking out across the
broad green water-meadows, beyond which the low hills rose softly in
gentle curves and dingles.

A whole company of amiable dogs, spaniels and terriers, came out with
an effusive welcome; a big black yard-dog, after a loud protesting
bark, joined in the civilities. And there I sat down in the warm sun,
to drink in the beauty of the scene, while the moor-hens cried
plaintively in the moat, and the dogs disposed themselves at my feet.
The man who designed this old place must have had a wonderful sense of
the be