The approach to the priest-house was by a stone-flagged footway across a garden gay and sweet-scented with old-fashioned flowers. "Scents are the souls of flowers," says an old writer whose name I have forgotten: if only these hardy, old-fashioned flowers were rare and difficult to grow, how we should prize them for their charm of colour and their sweetness, both so happily combined! But the modern highly-paid gardener despises them as common: well, the uncultivated foxglove is common enough flourishing in neglected spots, yet no pampered hothouse flower seems half so graceful, stately, or pleasing to my eye. [Illustration: A PRE-REFORMATION PRIEST-HOUSE, WEST HOATHLY.] The door of the house was of oak and nail-studded, and there was a quaintly-shaped iron knocker on it of some antiquity; a gentle tap or two of this brought an old woman to me. "Could I see the house?" I queried. "Why, certainly," she replied; "that's what I be here for, to show it to any one, and to take care of it. I'm only too pleased to see a visitor, I don't see many; it be a bit dull living here alone, it makes me feel almost silly like at times. Come in, please." Fortune was kind; I hardly expected to see over the place, and I found not only ready admission but a guide at my service. The old body proved intelligent but talkative; she told me one thing after another about the place and its history in such breathless succession that I scarce could follow her; I begged for a little time just to jot down a note or two, but as soon as I started to do this she recommenced prattling harder than ever. I think I never before met a woman capable of getting in so many words to the minute, though I have met many very capable ones in that respect. The worst of it was, she had really much of interest to relate, but so eager and in so much haste was she to relate it that I could only secure stray items out of her hurricane of abundance. She had the history of the old place by heart, and was learnedly--would only that she had been leisurely--informative about its contents.