a
prettier road, as it passes under the Ockley elm trees, or a more
tranquil outlook for an inn. Low-roofed cottages edge the grass, warm
and sheltered; a drinking fountain on the green level suggests summer
games and thirsty cricketers; though I think Ockley has contributed no
great cricketers to the game. Beyond the green lie stretches of pasture
and rich and smiling woodland.

The church stands nearly a mile from the green, and to its quiet acre
belongs one of the prettiest traditions of bygone Surrey--the planting
of rose-trees over the graves of betrothed lovers. It was still a custom
in Aubrey's time:--

"In the churchyard are many red rose-trees planted among the graves,
which have been there beyond man's memory. The sweetheart (male or
female) plants roses at the head of the grave of the lover deceased;
a maid that had lost her dear twenty years since, yearly hath the
grave new turfed, and continues yet unmarried."

Rose-trees still grow in the churchyard, though perhaps the planting of
them does not go back beyond man's memory.

Although so quiet a little village to-day, the neighbourhood of Ockley
has seen some wild doings. Holmbury Hill, to the north, was once one of
the principal settlements of the "Heathers," or broom squires, who still
survive, a more respectable and a weaker folk, under Hindhead and
elsewhere. Here one of their chief occupations was smuggling; indeed,
the range of hills round Ewhurst and Holmbury Common served as a kind of
halfway house for the gentlemen who were riding with silk and brandy
from the Sussex seaboard to London. It was a Burwash mother who used to
put her child to bed with the injunction, "Now, mind, if the gentlemen
come along, don't you look out of the window"; doubtless the text which
inspired Mr. Kipling's delightful verses. But there must have been many
a Ewhurst and Ockley mother who knew "the gentlemen" by sight, and
counselled confiding children to hold their tongues and look in the
proper direction as the Burwash woman bids her child in Mr. Kipling's
song:--

"If you meet King George's men, dressed in blue and red,
You be careful what you say, and mindful what is said.
If they call you 'pretty maid,' and chuck you 'neath the chin,
Don't you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one's been
If you do as you've been told, likely there's a chance,
You'll be give a dainty doll, all the way from France,
With a cap o