Staverton Rood Screen 131 Inside the Village Inn 155 The Old George Inn, Glastonbury 169 Old Mill in Cornwall 183 Plan of Buildings at Anseremme 193 Anseremme, on the Meuse 197 An Essex Farmhouse 207 Old Cottages at Henbury 219 Wonson Manor 279 Alabaster Slab with Footprints, Vatican, Rome 295 Devonshire Hedges 306 [Illustration: PATERNAL ACRES] CHAPTER I. There lives in my neighbourhood a venerable dame, in an old bacon box in a fallen cottage, whose condition will be best understood by the annexed illustration. Fifteen years ago the house was in habitable condition, that is to say to such as are not particular. It was true that the thatched roof had given way in places; but the proprietress obtained shelter for her head by stuffing up the chimney of the bedroom fireplace with a sack filled with chaff, and pushing her bed to the hearth and sleeping with her head under the sack. But access to this bedroom became difficult, as the stairs, exposed to rain, rotted, and she was compelled to ascend and descend by an improvised ladder. After a while the ladder collapsed. Then the old lady descended for good and all, and took up her abode on the ground floor--kitchen, and parlour, and dining-room, and bedroom all in one. "And terr'ble warm and comfortable it be," said she, when the roof fell in bodily, and covered the floor overhead. But when the walls were exposed, rain and frost told on them, and also on the beam ends sustaining the floor, and the next stage was that one side of the floor gave way wholly. "Tes best as it be," said the old woman; "now the rain runs off more suant." But in falling the floor blocked the fireplace and the doorway. The consequences are--now we come to the present condition of affairs--that the old lady has had to do without a fire for certainly three winters, amongst others that bitter one of 1893-4, and her only means of egress and ingress is through the window. Of that not one half of the panes are whole; the gaps are stopped with rags. [Illustration: MARIANNE'S COTTAGE] And now the floor is rotted through overhead by the mouldering thatch that covers it in part, and the rain drips through.[1] Accordingly my lady has taken refuge in an old chest, and keeps the lid up with a brick. "Tes terr'ble cosy," says she. Last year, having a Scottish gentleman staying with me, I took him over to call on "Marianne." We had a long interview. As we left, he turned to me with a look of dismay and said, "Good heavens! in the wildest parts of the Highlands such a thing would be impossible--and in England!"--he did not finish the sentence.