place, perched on the southern slope of a wooded hill, with a broad
fertile valley lying spread out before it, and the woods behind
affording every promise of sport. The house, my father said, was
good, odd and irregular, built at different times, but quite
habitable, and with plenty of furniture, though he opined that mamma
would think it needed modernising, to which she replied that our
present chattels would make a great difference; whereat my father,
looking at the effects of more than twenty years of London blacks,
gave a little whistle, for she was always the economical one of the
pair.

Emily, with glowing cheeks and eager eyes, entreated to know whether
it was Gothic, and had a cloister! Papa nipped her hopes of a
cloister, but there were Gothic windows and doorway, and a bit of
ruin in the garden, a fragment of the old chapel.

My father could not resign his office without notice, and, besides,
he wished Miss Selby to have leisure for leaving her home of many
years; after which there would be a few needful repairs. The delay
was not a great grievance to any of us except little Martyn. We
were much more Cockney than almost any one is in these days of
railways. We were unusually devoid of kindred on both sides, my
father's holidays were short, I was not a very movable commodity,
and economy forbade long journeys, so that we had never gone farther
than Ramsgate, where we claimed a certain lodging-house as a sort of
right every summer.

Real country was as much unknown to us as the backwoods. My father
alone had been born and bred to village life and habits, for my
mother had spent her youth in a succession of seaport towns,
frequented by men-of-war. We heard, too, that Chantry House was
very secluded, with only a few cottages near at hand - a mile and a
half from the church and village of Earlscombe, three from the tiny
country town of Wattlesea, four from the place where the coach
passed, connecting it with the civilisation of Bath and Bristol,
from each of which places it was about half a day's distance,
according to the measures of those times. It was a sort of
banishment to people accustomed to the stream of life in London; and
though the consequence and importance derived from being raised to
the ranks of the Squirearchy were agreeable, they were a dear
purchase at the cost of being out of reach of all our friends and
acquaintances, as well as of other advantages.

To my father, however, the retirement from his many years of
drudgery was really welcome, and he had preserved enough of country
tastes to rejoice that it was, as he said, a clear duty to reside on
his estate and look after his property. My mother saw his relief in
the prospect, and suppressed her sighs at the dislocation of her
life-long habits, and the loss of intercourse with the acquaintance
whom separation raised to the rank of intimate friends, even her
misgivings as to butchers, bakers, and grocers in the wilderness,
and still worse, as to doctors for me.

'Humph!' said the Admiral, 'the boy will be all the better without
them.'

And so I was; I can't say they were the subject of much regret, but
I was really sorry to leave our big neighbour, the British Museum,
where there were good friends who always made me welcome, and
encouraged me in studies of coins and heraldry, which were great
resources to me, so that I used to spend hours there, and was by no
means willing to resign my ambition of obtaining an appointment
there, when I heard my father say that he was especially thankful
for his good fortune because it enabled him to provide for me.
There were lessons, too, from masters in languages, music, and
drawing, which Emily and I shared, and which she had just begun to
value thoroughly. We had filled whole drawing-books with wriggling
twists of foliage in B B B marking pencil, and had just been
promoted to water-colours; and she was beginning to sing very
prettily. I feared, too, that I should no longer have a chance of
rivalling Griffith's university studies. All this, with my sister's
girl friends, and those kind people who used to drop in to play
chess, and otherwise amuse me, would all be left behind; and, sorest
of all, Clarence, who, whatever he was in the eyes of others, had
grown to be my mainstay during this last year. He it was who
fetched me from the Museum, took me into the gardens, helped me up
and down stairs, spared no pains to rout out whatever my fanciful
pursuits required from shops in the City, and, in very truth, spoilt
me through all his hours that were free from business, besides being
my most perfect sympathising and understanding companion.

I feared, too, that he would be terribly lonesome, though of late he
had been less haunted by longings for the sea, had made some way
with his fellows, and had been commended by the managing clerk; and
it was painful to find the elders did not grieve on their own
account at parting with him. My mother told the Admiral that she
thought it would be good for Mr. Winslow's spirits not to be
continually reminded of his trouble; and my father might be heard
confiding to Mr. Castleford that the separation might be good for
both her and her son, if only the lad could be trusted. To which
that good man replied by giving him an excellent character; but was
only met by a sigh, and 'Well, we shall see!'

Clarence was to be lodged with Peter, whose devotion would not
extend to following us into barbarism, where, as he told us, he
understood there was no such thing as a 'harea,' and master would
have to kill his own mutton.

Peter had been tranquilly engaged to Gooch for years untold. They
were to be transformed into Mr. and Mrs. Robson, with some small
appointment about the Law Courts for him, and a lodging-house for
her, where Clarence was to abide, my mother feeling secure that
neither his health, his morals, nor his shirts could go much astray
without her receiving warning thereof.

Meanwhile, by the help of an antiquarian friend of my father, Mr.
Stafford, who was great in county history, I hunted up in the Museum
library all I could discover about our new possession.

The Chantry of St. Cecily at Earlscombe, in Somersetshire, had, it
appeared, been founded and endowed by Dame Isabel d'Oyley, in the
year of grace 1434, that constant prayers might be offered for the
souls of her husband and son, slain in the French wars. The poor
lady's intentions, which to our Protestant minds appeared rather
shocking than otherwise, had been frustrated at the break up of such
establishments, when the Chantry, and the estate that maintained its
clerks and bedesmen, was granted to Sir Harry Power, from whom,
through two heiresses, it had come to the Fordyces, the last of
whom, by name Margaret, had died childless, leaving the estate to
her stepson, Philip Winslow, our ancestor.

Moreover, we learnt that a portion of the building was of ancient
date, and that there was an 'interesting fragment' of the old chapel
in the grounds, which our good friend promised himself the pleasure
of investigating on his first holiday.

To add to our newly-acquired sense of consideration and of high
pedigree, the family chariot, after taking Miss Selby to Bath, came
up post to London to be touched up at the coachbuilder's, have the
escutcheon altered so as to impale the Griffith coat instead of the
Selby, and finally to convey us to our new abode, in preparation for
which all its boxes came to be packed.

A chariot! You young ones have as little notion of one as of a
British war-chariot armed with scythes. Yet people of a certain
grade were as sure to keep their chariot as their silver tea-pot;
indeed we knew one young couple who started in life with no other
habitation, but spent their time as nomads, in visits to their
relations and friends, for visits WERE visits then.

The capacities of a chariot were considerable. Within, there was a
good-sized seat for the principal occupants, and outside a dickey
behind, and a driving box before, though sometimes there was only
one of these, and that transferable. The boxes were calculated to
hold family luggage on a six months' tour. There they lay on the
spare-room floor, ready to be packed, the first earnest of our new
possessions - except perhaps the five-pound note my father gave each
of us four elder ones, on the day the balance at the bank was made
over to him. There was the imperial, a grand roomy receptacle,
which was placed on the top of the carriage, and would not always go
upstairs in small houses; the capbox, which fitted into a curved
place in front of the windows, and could not stand alone, but had a
frame to support it; two long narrow boxes with the like infirmity
of standing, which fitted in below; square ones under each seat; and
a drop box fastened on behind. There were pockets beneath each
window, and, curious relic in name and nature of the time when every
gentleman carried his weapon, there was the sword case, an
excrescence behind the back of the best seat, accessible by lifting
a cushion, where weapons used to be carried, but where in our
peaceful times travellers bestowed their luncheon and their books.

Our chariot was black above, canary yellow below, beautifully
varnished, and with our arms blazoned on each door. It was lined
with dark blue leather and cloth, picked out with blue and yellow
lace in accordance with our liveries, and was a gorgeous spectacle.
I am afraid Emily did not share in Mistress Gilpin's humility when


'The chaise was brought,
But yet was not allowed
To drive up to the door, lest all
Should say that she was proud!'


It was then that Emily and I each started a diary to record the
events of our new life. Hers flourished by fits and starts; but I
having perforce more leisure than she, mine has gone on with few
interruptions till the present time, and is the backbone of this
narrative, which I compile and condense from it and other sources
before destroying it.


CHAPTER VIII - THE OLD HOUSE


'Your history whither are you spinning?
Can you do nothing but describe?
A house there is, and that's enough!'

GRAY.

How we did enjoy our journey, when the wrench from our old home was
once made. We did not even leave Clarence behind, for Mr.
Castleford had given him a holiday, so that he might not appear to
be kept at a distance, as if under a cloud, and might help me
through our travels.

My mother and I occupied the inside of the carriage, with Emily
between us at the outset; but when we were off the London stones she
was often allowed to make a third on the dickey with Clarence and
Martyn, whose ecstatic heels could be endured for the sake of the
free air and the view. Of course we posted, and where there were
severe hills we indulged in four horses. The varieties of the
jackets of our post-boys, blue or yellow, as supposed to indicate
the politics of their inns, were interesting to us, as everything
was interesting then. Otherwise their equipment was exactly alike -
neat drab corduroy breeches and top-boots, and hats usually white,
and they were all boys, though the red faces and grizzled hair of
some looked as if they had faced the weather for at least fifty
years.

It was a beautiful August, and the harvest fields were a sight
perfectly new, filling us with rapture unspeakable. At every hill
which offered an excuse, our outsiders were on their feet, thrusting
in their heads and hands to us within with exclamations of delight,
and all sorts of discoveries - really new to us three younger ones.
Ears of corn, bearded barley, graceful oats, poppies, corn-flowers,
were all delicious novelties to Emily and me, though Griff and my
father laughed at our ecstasies, and my mother occasionally objected
to the wonderful accumulation of curiosities thrust into her lap or
the door pockets, and tried to persuade Martyn that rooks' wings,
dead hedgehogs, sticks and stones of various merits, might be found
at Earlscombe, until Clarence, by the judicious purchase of a basket
at Salisbury, contrived to satisfy all parties and safely dispose of
the treasures. The objects that stand out in my memory on that
journey were Salisbury Spire, and a long hill where the hedgebank
was one mass of the exquisite rose-bay willow herb - a perfect
revelation to our city-bred eyes; but indeed, the whole route was
like one panorama to us of L'Allegro and other descriptions on which
we had fed. For in those days we were much more devoted to poetry
than is the present generation, which has a good deal of false shame
on that head.

Even dining and sleeping at an inn formed a pleasing novelty, though
we did not exactly sympathise with Martyn when he dashed in at
breakfast exulting in having witnessed the killing of a pig. As my
father observed, it was too like realising Peter's forebodings of
our return to savage life.

Demonstrations were not the fashion of these times, and there was a
good deal of dull discontent and disaffection in the air, so that no
tokens of welcome were prepared for us - not even a peal of bells;
nor indeed should we have heard them if they had been rung, for the
church was a mile and a half beyond the house, with a wood between
cutting off the sound, except in certain winds. We did not miss a
reception, which would rather have embarrassed us. We began to
think it was time to arrive, and my father believed we were climbing
the last hill, when, just as we had passed a remarkably pretty
village and church, Griffith called out to say that we were on our
own ground. He had made his researches with the game keeper while
my father was busy with the solicitor, and could point to our
boundary wall, a little below the top of the hill on the northern
side. He informed us that the place we had passed was Hillside -
Fordyce property, - but this was Earlscombe, our own. It was a great
stony bit of pasture with a few scattered trees, but after the flat
summit was past, the southern side was all beechwood, where a gate
admitted us into a drive cut out in a slant down the otherwise steep
descent, and coming out into an open space. And there we were!

The old house was placed on the widest part of a kind of shelf or
natural terrace, of a sort of amphitheatre shape, with wood on
either hand, but leaving an interval clear in the midst broad enough
for house and gardens, with a gentle green slope behind, and a much
steeper one in front, closed in by the beechwoods. The house stood
as it were sideways, or had been made to do so by later inhabitants.
I know this is very long-winded, but there have been such
alterations that without minute description this narrative will be
unintelligible.

The aspect was northwards so far as the lie of the ground was
concerned, but the house stood across. The main body was of the big
symmetrical Louis XIV. style - or, as it is now the fashion to call
it, Queen Anne - brick, with stone quoins, big sash-windows, and a
great square hall in the midst, with the chief rooms opening into
it. The principal entrance had been on the north, with a huge front
door and a flight of stone steps, and just space enough for a gravel
coach ring before the rapid grassy descent. Later constitutions,
however, must have eschewed that northern front door, and later
nerves that narrow verge, and on the eastern front had been added
that Gothic porch of which Emily had heard, - and a flagrantly modern
Gothic porch it was, flanked by two comical little turrets, with
loopholes, from which a thread-paper or Tom Thumb might have
defended it. Otherwise it resembled a church porch, except for the
formidable points of a sham portcullis; but there was no denying
that it greatly increased the comfort of the house, with its two
sets of heavy doors, and the seats on either side. The great hall
door had been closed up, plastered over within, and rendered
inoffensive. Towards the west there was another modern addition of
drawing and dining rooms, and handsome bedchambers above, in Gothic
taste, i.e. with pointed arches filled up with glass over the sash-
windows. The drawing-room was very pretty, with a glass door at the
end leading into an old-fashioned greenhouse, and two French windows
to the south opening upon the lawn, which soon began to slope
upwards, curving, as I said, like an amphitheatre, and was always
shady and sheltered, tilting its flower-beds towards the house as if
to display them. The dining-room had, in like manner, one west and
two north windows, the latter commanding a grand view over the green
meadow-land below, dotted with round knolls, and rising into blue
hills beyond. We became proud of counting the villages and church
towers we could see from thence.

There was a still older portion, more ancient than the square corps
de logis, and built of the cream-coloured stone of the country. It
was at the south-eastern angle, where the ground began sloping so
near the house that this wing - if it may so be called - containing
two good-sized rooms nearly on a level with the upper floor, had
nothing below but some open stone vaultings, under which it was only
just possible for my tall brothers to stand upright, at the
innermost end. These opened into the cellars which, no doubt,
belonged to the fifteenth-century structure. There seemed to have
once been a door and two or three steps to the ground, which rose
very close to the southern end; but this had been walled up. The
rooms had deep mullioned windows east and west, and very handsome
groined ceilings, and were entered by two steps down from the
gallery round the upper part of the hall. There was a very handsome
double staircase of polished oak, shaped like a Y, the stem of which
began just opposite the original front door - making us wonder if
people knew what draughts were in the days of Queen Anne, and
remember Madame de Maintenon's complaint that health was sacrificed
to symmetry. Not far from this oldest portion were some broken bits
of wall and stumps of columns, remnants of the chapel, and prettily
wreathed with ivy and clematis. We rejoiced in such a pretty and
distinctive ornament to our garden, and never troubled ourselves
about the desecration; and certainly ours was one of the most
delightful gardens that ever existed, what with green turf, bright
flowers, shapely shrubs, and the grand beech-trees enclosing it with
their stately white pillars, green foliage, and the russet arcades
beneath them. The stillness was wonderful to ears accustomed to the
London roar - almost a new sensation. Emily was found, as she said,
'listening to the silence;' and my father declared that no one could
guess at the sense of rest that it gave him.

Of space within there was plenty, though so much had been sacrificed
to the hall and staircase; and this was apparently the cause of the
modern additions, as the original sitting-rooms, wainscotted and
double-doored, were rather small for family requirements. One of
these, once the dining-room, became my father's study, where he read
and wrote, saw his tenants, and by and by acted as Justice of the
Peace. The opposite one, towards the garden, was termed the book-
room. Here Martyn was to do his lessons, and Emily and I carry on
our studies, and do what she called keeping up her accomplishments.
My couch and appurtenances abode there, and it was to be my retreat
from company, - or on occasion could be made a supplementary drawing-
room, as its fittings showed it had been the parlour. It
communicated with another chamber, which became my own - sparing the
difficulties that stairs always presented; and beyond lay, niched
under the grand staircase, a tiny light closet, a passage-room,
where my mother put a bed for a man-servant, not liking to leave me
entirely alone on the ground floor. It led to a passage to the
garden door, also to my mother's den, dedicated to housewifely cares
and stores, and ended at the back stairs, descending to the
servants' region. This was very old, handsomely vaulted with stone,
and, owing to the fall of the ground, had ample space for light on
the north side, - where, beyond the drive, the descent was so rapid
as to afford Martyn infinite delight in rolling down, to the horror
of all beholders and the detriment of his white duck trowsers.

I don't know much about the upper story, so I spare you that. Emily
had a hankering for one of the pretty old mullioned-windowed rooms -
the mullion chambers, as she named them; but Griff pounced on them
at once, the inner for his repose, the outer for his guns and his
studies - not smoking, for young men were never permitted to smoke
within doors, nor indeed in any home society. The choice of the son
and heir was undisputed, and he proceeded to settle his possessions
in his new domains, where they made an imposing appearance.


CHAPTER IX - RATS


'As louder and louder, drawing near,
The gnawing of their teeth he could hear.'

SOUTHEY.

'What a ridiculous old fellow that Chapman is,' said Griff, coming
in from a conference with the gaunt old man who acted as keeper to
our not very extensive preserves. 'I told him to get some gins for
the rats in my rooms, and he shook his absurd head like any
mandarin, and said, "There baint no trap as will rid you of them
kind of varmint, sir."'

'Of course,' my father said, 'rats are part of the entail of an old
house. You may reckon on them.'

'Those rooms of yours are the very place for them,' added my mother.
'I only hope they will not infest the rest of the house.'

To which Griff rejoined that they perpetrated the most extraordinary
noises he had ever heard from rats, and told Emily she might be
thankful to him for taking those rooms, for she would have been
frightened out of her little wits. He meant, he said, to get a
little terrier, and have a thorough good rat hunt, at which Martyn
capered about in irrepressible ecstasy.

This, however, was deferred by the unwillingness of old Chapman, of
whom even Griff was somewhat in awe. His fame as a sportsman had to
be made, and he had had only such practice as could be attained by
shooting at a mark ever since he had been aware of his coming
greatness. So he was desirous of conciliating Chapman, and not
getting laughed at as the London young gentleman who could not hit a
hay-stack. My father, who had been used to carrying a gun in his
younger days, was much amused, in his quiet way, at seeing Griff
watch Chapman off on his rounds, and then betake himself to the
locality most remote from the keeper's ears to practise on the rook
or crow. Martyn always ran after him, having solemnly promised not
to touch the gun, and to keep behind. He was too good-natured to
send the little fellow back, though he often tried to elude the
pursuit, not wishing for a witness to his attempts; and he never
invited Clarence, who had had some experience of curious game but
never mentioned it.

Clarence devoted himself to Emily and me, tugging my garden-chair
along all the paths where it would go without too much jolting, and
when I had had enough, exploring those hanging woods, either with
her or on his own account. They used to come home with their hands
full of flowers, and this resulted in a vehement attack of botany, -
a taste that has lasted all our lives, together with the hortus
siccus to which we still make additions, though there has been a
revolution there as well as everywhere else, and the Linnaean system
we learnt so eagerly from Martin's Letters is altogether exploded
and antiquated. Still, my sister refuses to own the scientific
merits of the natural system, and can point to school-bred and
lectured young ladies who have no notion how to discover the name or
nature of a live plant.

On the Friday after our arrival the noises had been so fearful that
Griff had been exasperated into going off across the hills,
accompanied by his constant shadow, Martyn, in search of the
professional ratcatcher of the neighbourhood, in spite of Chapman's
warning - that Tom Petty was the biggest rascal in the neighbourhood,
and a regular out and out poacher; and as to the noises - he couldn't
'tackle the like of they.' After revelling in the beauty of the
beechwoods as long as was good for me or for Clarence, I was left in
the garden to sketch the ruin, while my two companions started on
one of their exploring expeditions.

It was getting late enough to think of going to prepare for the six
o'clock dinner when Emily came forth alone from the path between the
trees, announcing - 'An adventure, Edward! We have had such an
adventure.'

'Where's Clarence?'

'Gone for the doctor! Oh, no; Griff hasn't shot anybody. He is