eadow, while the great oak woods hang still and
solemn above it, till some bold green headland slopes down and shuts it
from your sight; and you raise your eyes, and count fresh headlands
crossing each other right and left beyond it, fainter and fainter, till
at last they end in a little patch of purple heather, which seems to be
the end of all things.

But when you look down the water, you find that the woods no longer
cover the sunny side of the valley so thickly, but that there is open
ground like a park. There is a gate by the bridge opening on to a
narrow road, which presently ends in two great spreading yews; and
through these you can see a lych-gate, and beyond it a little grey
church with a low grey tower. Close to this gate is a lodge of grey
stone, with a winding drive which guides your eye through the trees to
the gables of a house of the same grey stone, which peer up over the
trees on the ground above the church. Then beyond it the headlands of
green wood begin to cross each other again, lower and lower, till you
can follow them no more.

So Ashacombe, as may easily be guessed, is a sleepy little village,
which sees little of the great world outside. But whatever it sees it
can see well, for the hill on which it stands is so much broken by
little clefts and hollows that some of the cottages stand level with
the road and some high above it; wherefore if you are not satisfied
with looking at anything on the road from the same level, you can go to
some neighbour's garden and gaze down upon it from above, or again you
can slip down from the road into the meadow (for the road is raised on
a wall) and scrutinise it carefully from below. Still sleepy though
the village may be, it is always beautifully neat and clean. The walls
are always of spotless white, and the thatch trim and in good repair.
The scrap of garden behind each cottage is well tended and full of
vegetables, and the scrap of garden in front gay with flowers; for
Ashacombe has never known the time when there was not a master or
mistress in the Hall who made the village their first care. Such it is
now, and such, if old pictures are to be trusted, it was with little
difference eighty years ago, at which time we are about to examine its
history.

But if visitors come to Ashacombe it is to see not the village but the
Hall, for Bracefort Hall has some fame of its own. It is a beautiful
little house, built in the time of King Henry the Sixth, a