ld have seen it first, perhaps, from that ancient trackway, and have
wondered what manner of man its master might be, and how much he paid
for the building of it, and whether the King or the Queen would be
coming to Loseley again soon. That is the Loseley they would have seen;
a noble dwelling of grey gables and spacious windows, looking over broad
parkland and wide water with red cattle standing in it, flicking at the
flies with their tails. So, perhaps, would Henry Wriothesley, second
Earl of Southampton, have looked at Loseley from a distance, when
Elizabeth sent him there, the Papist prisoner of Sir William More. He
would have glanced doubtfully up and down the old road and wondered over
the hopelessness of escape.

Godalming's nearest, and in point of size, its greatest neighbour is
Charterhouse. Charterhouse is the name; the buildings are not yet forty
years old. The school moved from Aldersgate to the hill above Godalming
in 1872, and took the memories of Addison, Steele, and Thackeray with it
in its museum and library. The Charterhouse buildings belong to the
future. Centuries will add the grace of dulness to its new stone; trees
will grow round its cricket ground, distance will set a haze round the
names of its Surrey schoolboys; it will have venerable wood, there will
be legends of the passages and the stairs; the doors will have been
darkened by great men; there will be a film and a glory of years about
its chapel. To-day it is admirably arranged, hygienic beyond praise:
then it will be an old building as well as an old school.

[Illustration: _View from Hindhead._]

CHAPTER XII

HASLEMERE AND HINDHEAD

Six hundred feet up.--Haslemere's Museum.--A strange Tomb.--The
Lion.--The Cow.--Snipes in Conduit Street.--Shottermill
Trout.--Hindhead.--The Riddle of a Crime.--A deserted Road.--The
View from Gibbet Hill.--Airly Beacon.--The Broom Squire.--Highcombe
Bottom.--Pheasants, Tadpoles, and Swifts.

Hindhead commands the south-west corner of the county, but Haslemere is
the key to it. You cannot walk away from Hindhead and take a train back
if you want to, which you ought always to be able to do from a centre.
Besides, to return to Hindhead is to end with a steep hill to climb;
coming back to Haslemere, you can either drop down the hill from
Hindhead, or the railway will carry you uphill to the little town from
Milford or Witley down the line.

It is really uphill, for Haslemere