Suddenly down plumps the rain, in splashes first, as large as sixpenny-pieces; but anon with a steady downpour that drives one into waterproof gear. The brunt of the battle, however, is not for us; the cloud-wrack and tempest rolling away over the country in confused, towering masses, like an army in full retreat; while shafts of sunlight skirmish athwart the landscape in pursuit of the flying foe.
The rain ceasing as suddenly as it began, we push on along the lonely road; with a little, dry, dusty Sahara under each tree overhanging the pathway, and blue puddles in every wheel-rut, like bits of the sky tumbled out of their places. The woodlands re-echo once more to the pipe of thrush, piefinch and blackbird; and the parched foliage renews its youth in the genial, life-giving moisture.
Meanwhile, as the hedgerows, all a-sparkle with raindrops, go twinkling by, we fall to 'blowing the cool tobacco cloud, and watching the white wreaths pass;' and vowing that, let tarry-at-home folk say what they will, there's no such thing as bad weather!
So we jog merrily onward; now meeting a waggoner loading timber at a farmyard gate, anon passing the time of day with an old country woman tending her cow by the laneside. Nothing much worthy of note is seen until, drawing nigh our destination, we come to a place called Humphreston, where the lane takes a sudden turn.
Here we find a large old timbered farmhouse, with huge oak beams in the ceiling of its roomy kitchen, and carved panelling around some of the better rooms; and doors upstairs that still retain their original wrought iron hinges and wooden thumb-latches. The place must formerly have been surrounded by a moat, for a part of it yet remains, besides a good stone doorway in the adjacent boundary wall—altogether a notable old house, which looks as if it might have had a history. Who knows but what it is named after that Humphrey Penderel, Miller of Whiteladies Mill, whose horse had the honour of carrying, as he declared, 'the price of three kingdoms on his back'?
Thence it is but a mile to The Crown at Albrighton, a fine, upstanding old inn, shewing a ruddy, genial-looking gabled front towards the village street, and boasting withal one of the best bowling-greens in the county. So calling in to test the quality of mine host's ale, half-an-hour slips away in no time as we take our ease in the bar parlour, before starting forth to investigate our new neighbourhood.
Albrighton.