s Walk, beyond where the lime-grove ends, whence the
prebend's residence can be faintly distinguished through the clustering
masses of tree-foliage, merges into the open, commanding the river in
front; but it is still marked out by a stray elm or horse-chestnut,
placed at scanty intervals, to keep up the idea of the ancient avenue
beyond.

Here, turning to the right and crossing a piece of unkempt land, half
copse, half meadow, the scene again changed.

You came to a stile. That surmounted and left behind, a narrow by-path
led you through its twisting turns until you reached a tiny, rustic
stone bridge--such a tiny, little bridge! This was over the sluice and
aqueduct from the adjacent river, which supplied the fosse that in olden
times surrounded the prebend's residence, when there were such things as
sieges and besiegements in this fair land of ours.

The prebend's residence was then a castle, protected, probably, by
battlements and mantlets and turreted walls, and with its keep and its
drawbridge, its postern and its fosse--simple works of defence that were
armed for retaliation, with catapult and mangonel, the canon raye of the
period, besides arquebuse and other hand weapons wielded, no doubt, by
mighty men at arms, mail-clad and helmeted, who knew how to give and
take with the best of them; now, it was but a peaceful priest's
dwelling, inhabited by as true a clergyman and gentleman as ever lived,
although it was still a fine old house.

As for the fosse, it sank long ages ago to the level and capacity of a
common ditch, and was almost hidden from view by the overhanging boughs
and branches of the park trees on the opposite side, and the half-
decayed trunks of former monarchs of the forest that filled its bed--a
ditch covered with a superstratum of slimy, green water, lank weeds, and
rank vegetation; and wherein, at flood time, urchin anglers could fish
for eels and sticklebats, and, at ebb, the village ducks disport
themselves and mudlarks play.

Along this fosse, the path continued. Further on, it widened into a
broader way, which led you direct to the churchyard of Saint Canon's.
So studded is it with weatherworn tombstones, inclining at all angles
like so many miniature leaning towers of Pisa, ivy-wreathed obelisks and
quaintly-fashioned, railed-in monuments, that you can scarcely make out
the lower buttresses of the ancient church that stands up from amongst
their midst.

With its whitish-grey walls