, and runs under the shade of some superb Spanish chestnuts.

Perhaps half a mile from the park, in the depth of a wood of box, are
the two Sherborne Farm ponds, one of which has come by the name of the
Silent Pool. The Sherborne ponds lie somewhere near the track of the
pilgrims, and I like to think that the journeying men knew them and
drank their clear water. Legend has grown round the deeper, upper pool.
Martin Tupper, in his strange medley _Stephan Langton_, has shaped it
into his story. A lovely peasant girl used to bathe in the pool; King
John, riding by, saw her and drove his horse at her, and she, trying to
escape, fell into deep water and was drowned. That was not enough for
Martin Tupper; he decided that her brother should try to rescue her and
be drowned also. There they lay, the two of them; "the brother and
sister are locked in each other's arms in the tranquil crystal depth of
Shirebourne Pond; and the rippled surface is all smooth once more; and
you may see the trout shoaling among the still green weeds around that
naked raven-haired Sabrina, and her poor drowned brother in his cowskin
tunic." So wrote Tupper; a most moving finish of a chapter.

To gain the Silent Pool, if you are in Albury, walk eastwards right
through the village and turn to the left over the Tillingbourne. Then to
the left again, and you will spy a cottage, the gate of which bears the
legend "Key of the Pool kept here." How should a pool have a key? It
turns out to be two keys, one of a padlock shutting an iron gate leading
to a grove of box trees; you shut the padlock and find that you have
left all who come after you--and on Saturdays at least they are many--to
climb the fence. The Silent Pool, when I saw it first, a little
disappointed me. I ought to have known that it would, because everybody
could tell me where it was, even quite unintelligent people walking
about the road two miles away. I think I hoped the pool would be, not
only solitary and sequestered, but entirely deserted by human beings; a
pool on which you came suddenly, lying hidden in the heart of chalky
dells dark green with box trees; it was to be as deep as a well, and
cold with the coldness of a spring; smelling, too, of bitter wet box and
sun-warmed chalk. It was to be a pool at the side of which the stranger
should seat himself, and discover the air of the place so quiet and
enchanted that he could hear no sound of birds or beasts or men; only,
perhaps, the melod