unexpected things when travelling by road. To some there is a potent magnetism, an irresistible fascination about certain old houses, a subtle influence from which there is no escape. I confess to it myself. I have lived in them and love them. Of course there are old houses and old houses; not all possess this peculiar power to charm, and only those of the Elizabethan or Jacobean period, with their panelled halls and chambers, their beamed ceilings, their great gables, their clustering chimneys, their many mullioned windows and big fireplaces, hold it over me. Those of the Queen Anne or Georgian age leave me cold; they are too formal; they lack the sense of mystery and atmosphere of romance. The old moated granges pictured in the Christmas numbers of the _Illustrated London News_ of many years back, how they charmed me when a boy! What romances about them did not I weave to myself! I thought they were only artists' dreams, but since I have happily discovered them actually existing. I shall never forget the thrill of delightful surprise the first discovery of the kind gave me; I could hardly believe my eyes, yet there before me stood an ancient moated home, grey, gabled, and ivy-clad, with a broken bell-turret on its lichen-laden roof, its leaded-light windows reflecting the sunlight, and its big chimney-stacks rising boldly up against the sky; nor shall I forget the special moment when I crossed the deep moat by a moss-grown bridge and knocked at the great oak and nail-studded door. I felt like one in a dream, that this could not be a reality, and that I should suddenly wake up and find myself deceived, disenchanted, and in the commonplace world again. Happily it was no vain imagining. But I am digressing. We were wandering on winding lanes south of Burford when I began this overlong digression, and on that maze of lanes we wandered for some miles--many they seemed to me; first in one direction, then in another we went, without arriving anywhere. All the same, it was very pleasant wandering through a land purely given over to agriculture, somnolent and restful. At last we reached a fair road, and this took us to the little Wiltshire town of Highworth, boldly set on a hill, so that we could see it from afar long before we came to it, its grey church tower and irregular roofed houses outlined sharply against the sky. Seen thus the town looked like those one finds in early engravings.