wholly built of oak, and the
beams supporting the belfry are almost as fine as those of the Thursley
tower; possibly they are the work of the same craftsmen. Like other
Wealden churches, Newdigate has an abiding charm in her peal of bells.
They have been re-cast, but the Newdigate bellringers have long records
of changes rung in the little tower. Some of the records are painted on
wooden panels in the belfry. To the layman who has never rung a bell the
names of the changes are stimulating. Colledge Singles, Grandsire
Doubles, College Exercise, and College Pleasure are fairly simple; but
Without a Dodge provokes thought, and Woodbine Violet must have been
named by the village poet.

[Illustration: _Newdigate Church._]

Surrey autumns invest the shingled spires of these Wealden churches
with a peculiar beauty. Grey and white, black-streaked and shining,
weatherbeaten and weather-conquering, there is nothing in architecture
lighter or more graceful than the patterned sheaths of native oak
surmounting belfries which, sometimes for centuries, have called the
villagers to church. But in late autumn, when the swallows and martins
are practising starts for their long journey, the shingled spires turn
themselves to fresh uses. On a sunny day the birds come about them in
scores, pressing their bodies flat against the warm, dry wood, darting
out for short flights, hawking gnats and midges, and flitting back
again, keeping up through it all the sweetest and gentlest of anxious
twitterings, and, when they are clinging to the chequered wood,
resembling it so closely in colour and texture as to make it hard to
count a dozen birds quickly. Martins near their time for going enter on
all kinds of engaging habits, especially just before and just after
dusk, when bands of a dozen or so seem suddenly to make up their minds
to trial flights of the most amazing speed, utterly unlike their
ordinary, quiet flittings. But there is nothing prettier in all the
pageant of the migrants' year, than a dozen score martins with the
unrest of autumn on them darting round a shingled spire.

CHAPTER XXXIII

REIGATE

Reigate Castle.--De Warenne.--A Swashbuckler and a Swordsman.--The
Reigate Caves.--Lord Holland's soldiering.--Pilgrims at the Red
Cross.--General of the Royale Navey.--Olde Dutchesse Norf.--"W.
W."--Reigate Politics.--The Marble Hall.--The White Hart.--A Race
against Time.

Four castles stood along the ridge