The labours of the deliberate assembly being at an end, the members of the jury adjourned for the Hocktide luncheon, while pence and oranges were thrown from the window to the crowds of children who were granted a holiday in honour of the event. When the company separated the "Tuttimen" continued their mission.
It is astonishing how many of these quaint old customs are still preserved in various parts of the country, such as the curious horn-dance at Abbot's Bromley we came upon a little later in the journey. How few people seem to be aware of them or their surprising number.
A little beyond Hungerford we bade good-bye to the Bath road, for espying a promising byway we followed it up the narrow Kennett valley. The quiet beauty of the scenery took us by surprise. As long as the river kept us welcome company the valley was as fair as a valley may be; truly we saw it under the inspiriting effect of the cheerful sunshine, but that only enhanced and did not cause its charms; the clouds had rolled away and the sky above was serenely blue, and all the land was bathed in golden light. When the English weather is really in a good humour, truly it can make things very pleasant. From one point of the road we had a delightful vision of the shallow river where it widened out and ran rippling merrily over its pebbly bed, silvery and sparkling and gold in the sunshine, with dark green woods rising above, low hills rising beyond these again; and the river sang its song as it ran to the music of the wind-stirred trees. So both eye and ear shared in the charm of the spot. When next I go a-fishing I should like to go a-fishing there, then, sport or no sport, it would be joy enough to be amongst such pleasant scenery, for I have an eye for a pretty river-side, an ear for rural sounds, as well as for that crowning delight—the exciting plash of a trout. Then we drove on between wooded hills that rose gently on either hand, passing near by to our left Littlecote House, that lonely, grey, ancient, and some people have it haunted, home, overshadowed by the gruesome story of "Wild" Darell, a tragedy too well known to need repeating here—an almost incredible tragedy, only that time has shown it to be true, and "truth is stranger than fiction," though some modern fiction is running truth uncommonly hard in this respect.
Aldbourne, the first village we came to, with its fine old stately-towered church, its big round pond, and its antique houses grouped around it, pleased us vastly, for the village had such a remote and an unmistakable old-time air—a spot where we really seemed to have left the modern world wholly behind. For a moment we gave ourselves up to the illusion of the place, and were back in the seventeenth century. We pay the novelist to romance for us; why should not we do our own romancing at times? Therein lies the charm of old-fashioned places; they spur the imagination. As Laurence Sterne showed us, sentiment, after all, is not a bad thing.
It may have been wholly imagination on my part, but I thought that the people there had a contented look and a quiet eye, as though they had no part in the stress of modern life and the wearisome struggle of it. For where striving ceases, there life runs smoothly; and where life runs smoothly, there contentment reigns. Truly, my impressions were purely those of a passer-by, who had no part in the life of the place. Perhaps the traveller chiefly sees what he desires to see. Now I set out to see the bright side of life—who would blame me for that?—and I happily found what I sought; at some places more than others, still, always the bright side. It is a mere matter of eye-training, the seeking the gold and leaving the dross.
There is a Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings; I would there were a Society for the Preservation of Picturesque Villages, for many still there are, more than people imagine, that remain unspoilt, or almost so—villages that have not known the hand of the modern builder, bits of old England surviving in the midst of the new, and a gulf of centuries separates the two. Their churches stand on the same sites they did in the thirteenth or other early century; some of the Saxon times are of much earlier date; the continuity of the village and its life is astonishing. As in the days of old, there stands the snug rectory where it has stood for generations past; the humble inn with its swinging sign of "The Red Lion" as likely as not, though it may have suffered alteration, occupies the same spot where an inn has been "time out of memory." So with the cottages, one of which is generally the Post Office; and even in these democratic days the inhabitants are still divided into three classes—the squirearchy, the tradesfolk, and the labourers—and they seem to get along thus very well and contentedly, till the Socialist comes and scatters his tares.
THE VILLAGE POST OFFICE.
After Aldbourne the country had a wild and a deserted look, for we found ourselves traversing the open downs where the landmarks are few, our grey road winding before us miles away, with nothing else visible but bare, green, sun-flushed hills around. It was a glorious drive over those billowy downs, and bracing was the air of them, delightful too in its purity and in the delicate scent of the thymy turf that the breezes gathered on their way and brought to us. There one might indulge in