It is not near the station, and to reach it you walk or drive along winding roads just now sodden with rain, but smelling of the good wet Sussex leaves and mast and soil, with the Downs rising not too many miles away in the South. Then a turn into a narrow lane, with the bare trees of a copse on either side and a scurrying pheasant in front of you, and behold the white gate! There is no lodge--the house is just too small for that, as you can now see for yourself, for there it is, under the protection of the wood that rises behind it, so quiet and self-contained that you almost gasp. Very old it is, but good for many years more. The frame is of timber and plaster, and a Horsham stone roof. These stones are a little damp and moss-covered (for our ancestors insisted on building in a hole, or where would Friday's fish come from?), and the place is as Tudor as Queen Bess herself, in whose reign its foundations were dug. The chimney stacks, all smoking with the thin blue smoke of logs, are of tiny Tudor bricks, and the chimneys are set not square with the house but cornerways. A long low facade with the central door in a square porch; the whole grave but serene. A path of more Horsham stone leads to the door, with thyme and lavender springing from the interstices undismayed by the feet of man, and smooth lawns on each side, and under the diamond-paned windows a bed where in summer would be night stock and lemon verbena and tobacco plant and mignonette. On the roof a few white fantails; a spaniel near the door; and a great business of rooks in the sky. Through the windows of the lower rooms you see the greenery at the back of the house and a suggestion here and there of books and pictures--everything that makes a house a home. Beside the house on the right are the stables; and on the other side is a dark shrubbery, and beyond that are more lawns and gardens and the fish-pond. Do you see it? Perhaps you have already seen it differently; for how could you help forming some mental picture of it when in every carriage on the L.B. & S.C.R. is posted up the notice, "Passengers to Lower Blinds"? To me "Lower Blinds," whither all these fortunate passengers are journeying, is just such a manor-house as that. Rivalry When I sat down on the seat facing the Row there was already on it a soldier in the familiar blue clothes. He had the red moustache which inevitably leads to the nickname of "Ginger," or possibly "Carrots," and he was smoking a cigarette. By his side were his crutches. After a minute or so a very tall figure, also in blue, hobbled towards us and took the space between Ginger and myself. The freemasonry of arms has, I suppose, always, among rankers, made any introduction needless; but there has unhappily come in a new and a super freemasonry which goes beyond anything that uniform could do. I mean the freemasonry of mutilation. By reason of their wounds these strangers were as brothers.