horticultural skill
of the present day requires. The face of the house from one end to
the other was covered with vines and passion-flowers, for the aspect
was due south; and as the whole of the later addition was faced by
a verandah, which also, as regarded the ground-floor, ran along the
middle building, the place in summer was pretty enough. As I have
said before, it was irregular and straggling, but at the same time
roomy and picturesque. Such was Orley Farm-house.

There were about two hundred acres of land attached to it, together
with a large old-fashioned farm-yard, standing not so far from the
house as most gentlemen farmers might perhaps desire. The farm
buildings, however, were well hidden, for Sir Joseph, though he would
at no time go to the expense of constructing all anew, had spent more
money than such a proceeding would have cost him doctoring existing
evils and ornamenting the standing edifices. In doing this he had
extended the walls of a brewhouse, and covered them with creepers, so
as to shut out from the hall door the approach to the farm-yard, and
had put up a quarter of a mile of high ornamental paling for the same
purpose. He had planted an extensive shrubbery along the brow of the
hill at one side of the house, had built summer-houses, and sunk a
ha-ha fence below the orchard, and had contrived to give to the place
the unmistakable appearance of an English gentleman's country-house.
Nevertheless, Sir Joseph had never bestowed upon his estate, nor had
it ever deserved, a more grandiloquent name than that which it had
possessed of old.

Orley Farm-house itself is somewhat more than a mile distant from
the town of Hamworth, but the land runs in the direction of the
town, not skirting the high road, but stretching behind the cottages
which stand along the pathway; and it terminates in those two fields
respecting which Mr. Dockwrath the attorney became so irrationally
angry at the period of which we are now immediately about to treat.
These fields lie on the steep slope of Hamworth Hill, and through
them runs the public path from the hamlet of Roxeth up to Hamworth
church; for, as all the world knows, Hamworth church stands high, and
is a landmark to the world for miles and miles around.

Within a circuit of thirty miles from London no land lies more
beautifully circumstanced with regard to scenery than the country
about Hamworth; and its most perfect loveliness commences just
beyond the slopes