ey stack, and a
strange but most satisfying buttress which ties the house to the garden
wall.

The farm lies among pasture-lands through which rushes the prettiest
possible little brook. It is the Tillingbourne, here a stripling, and
never much bigger for that matter; but here it is the meadow-brook in
its ideal form. It runs from a broken mill-wheel below an old
hammerpond, past a cottage shaded by four noble yews, and then races
through two meadows faster, I think, than any brook anywhere else in
Surrey. The water runs with the deep sparkle of cut glass;
forget-me-nots grow about it, and reed mace, and figwort and
bittersweet; waterhens wander in the shaven grass of its brim, and
dabchicks go plump in the current like cricket-balls. There may be trout
in the stream here as there are by Albury, but I am sure it runs too
fast and round too many corners for anybody to catch them.

[Illustration: _Crossways Farmhouse, Abinger._]

The road leads south and up hill from the Crossways to Abinger Hatch,
bordering deep woods of oak and beech. In July and August the glades of
the Abinger woods, like the woods about Byfleet and Woking, gleam with
the pinks and purples of rosebay. Abinger Hatch is no more a village
than Wotton Hatch: both are wayside inns, and Abinger Hatch one of the
best country inns to be found in a walk. Saturdays and Sundays in the
summer fill it with guests from almost everywhere, who sit down to a
long table; my own first visit to the inn was on an ordinary weekday,
and the surprise was to discover that there was a hot lunch ready. Such
surprises are rare. But Abinger has everything worth keeping of the old
customs. The stocks stand at the churchyard gate, mouldering, but they
are there. The inn has the old name, and the little old bar, and the
old-fashioned custom of hanging the squire's portrait in the
dining-room. Only the church is a difficulty. It is kept locked, and it
takes ten minutes to walk to the rectory to get the key--too far for the
patience of those who would merely wish for rest and refreshment in the
cool and sacredness of a country church. I was fortunate in my day, for
I found the vestry door accidentally open, and a kindly countrywoman
cleaning the church; she let me in. The nave, with its hugely thick
walls and lancet windows, is unlike any other Surrey church; Mr. Philip
Johnston, who perhaps knows more about Surrey churches than anyone else,
dates it at 1080.

Nobody should go st