The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Widow's Dog, by Mary Russell Mitford

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Title: The Widow's Dog

Author: Mary Russell Mitford

Release Date: October 2, 2007 [EBook #22842]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIDOW'S DOG ***

Produced by David Widger

THE WIDOW'S DOG.

By Mary Russell Mitford

One of the most beautiful spots in the north of Hampshire--a part of the
country which, from its winding green lanes, with the trees meeting over
head-like a cradle, its winding roads between coppices, with wide turfy
margents on either side, as if left on purpose for the picturesque and
frequent gipsy camp, its abundance of hedgerow timber, and its extensive
tracts of woodland, seems as if the fields were just dug out of the
forest, as might have happened in the days of William Rufus--one of the
loveliest scenes in this lovely county is the Great Pond at Ashley End.

Ashley End is itself a romantic and beautiful village, struggling down a
steep hill to a clear and narrow running stream, which crosses the road
in the bottom, crossed in its turn by a picturesque wooden bridge, and
then winding with equal abruptness up the opposite acclivity, so that
the scattered cottages, separated from each other by long strips of
garden ground, the little country inn, and two or three old-fashioned
tenements of somewhat higher pretensions, surrounded by their own
moss-grown orchards, seemed to be completely shut out from this bustling
world, buried in the sloping meadows so deeply green, and the hanging
woods so rich in their various tinting, along which the slender wreaths
of smoke from the old clustered chimneys went smiling peacefully in the
pleasant autumn air. So profound was the tranquillity, that the slender
streamlet which gushed along the valley, following its natural windings,
and glittering in the noonday sun like a thread of silver, seemed to
the unfrequent visiters of that remote hamlet the only trace of life and
motion in the picture.

The source of this pretty brook was undoubtedly the Great Pond, although
there was no other road to it than by climbing the steep hill beyond
the village, and th