At the rear of "The Sheffield Arms" the country looked inviting with its green meadows and big branching trees, and noticing a footpath I was tempted to take a stroll. I had not wandered far when to my surprise I came upon a deep, rock-girt, and shady glen of much charm; at the head of this I caught a glimpse of a large still sheet of silvery water, a lake in miniature, for it was perhaps a quarter of a mile in length or more, of generous width also, and from its sides rose, steeply and abruptly, hills, wooded to the skyline--wooded hills that doubled themselves on its mirror-like surface. I have seldom come so suddenly upon so lovely a spot without a hint of what was to be revealed; in truth the scenery gave no suggestion of this, and, as a rule, Sussex lacks the enlivening presence of water. There was a joy in the discovery of that beauty-spot; nothing more delicious of the kind have I ever seen. Good things that come of course far less do please Than those that come by sweet contingencies. Possibly this sheet of water was artificial, though it had purely a natural look, for it may have been one of the numerous "hammer-ponds" constructed long ago for the service of an iron mill or mills in the now almost forgotten days when Sussex was the Black Country of England, when the present peaceful and pastoral land, as Camden says, "resounded with the noise of busy hammer-mills beating upon the iron," and its pure air was polluted with the smoke of many furnaces and forges of which Sheffield possessed its share. Sussex wood-smelted iron was reckoned the toughest in the world, and iron ore still abounds in the county; it was the failure of fuel for smelting, owing to the exhaustion of the forests and the near proximity of iron and coal in the North, that caused the decay of the extensive Sussex iron industry, not the lack of ore--a fortunate happening as far as the beauty of the land is concerned. Reminders of the period may be found in the many place-names on the map, such as "Steelforgeland," "Furnace Farm," "Cinder Hill," "Hammerfield," and numerous others of a similar nature. Those ancient iron-masters have left their gracious mark in the land by the many beautiful homes, standing yet, that they built for their convenience and enjoyment in the days of their prosperity: they built not only houses, they built pictures in stone, in brick, in half-timber, delightful to look upon; perhaps "they built better than they knew." Amongst the many in half-timber Middle House at Mayfield is a good example, and of those in stone Batemans, near Burwash, the home of Rudyard Kipling, is another.