er up to the belfry. This is
actually a single vast plank of oak, black and immoveable, sloped up
from a crossbeam and notched for steps. There are many magnificent beams
in Surrey churches, but this is the finest ladder of all of them. It
does not tempt ascent in days of more elaborate staircases; but it would
not break under the heaviest set of bellringers that ever rung a change.

[Illustration: _Witley._]

To the east is Milford, a good half mile from its station, and nothing
much besides. There is a good natural centre to the village, with four
cross roads and an inn, but no doubt Milford's future is to belong to
Godalming. A few half-timbered and weather-tiled cottages, which have
served as models for newer neighbours, some pollarded elms, a broad
smooth road and dusty jasmine--Milford is the first village on the
highway running south from Godalming, and on a summer Saturday is less a
village than a road.

[Illustration: _The White Hart, Witley._]

One of the four roads which branch off from Milford to the south runs to
Witley. Witley will look more tranquil and more seasoned fifty years
hence. To come into the village in the gathering dusk of a summer
evening, as I saw it first, is an enchantment; nothing could throw a
quieter spell than the brick and timber and tar and whitewash of the
cottages, the flowers climbing up the old inn, and the familiar noises
of a neighbouring game of cricket finishing in half darkness. But only
part of Witley will stand the full glare of sunlight. The new cottages
are finely designed, but they are too black-and-white and painty to
group easily with the older, mossier buildings and the White Hart Inn,
with its nobly ugly sign.

The church, bowered in ivy and roses, has some quaint inscriptions. One
commemorates a forgotten office:--

"Off yo^r charite pray for the soull^e of Thomas Jonys and his wyfe
Jane, which Thomas was one of the Sewers of the Chamber to oure
Soverayne lorde Kynge Henry VIII."

A Sewer of the Chamber waited at the table and brought water for the
hands of the guests--an office which suggests an obvious rhyme for poets
writing of water-jugs. Another epitaph is a shining example of the
proper manner of attributing to the dead an almost crushing superfluity
of virtues. Sara Holney, first in Latin, and then in English, thus is
lamented and extolled:--

"A better woman than here sleeps, there's none,
Sara, Rebecca, Rahel, three in one: