When calling to mind the churches known to me in this part of Hampshire, I always think with peculiar pleasure of the smaller ones, and perhaps with the most pleasure of the smallest of all--Priors Dean. It happened that the maps which I use in my Hampshire rambles and which I always considered the best--Bartholomew's two miles to the inch--did not mark Priors Dean, so that I had to go and find it for myself. I went with a friend one excessively hot day in July, by Empshott and Hawkley through deep by-roads so deep and narrow and roofed over with branches as to seem in places like tunnels. On that hot day in the silent time of year it was strangely still, and gave one the feeling of being in a country long deserted by man. Its only inhabitants now appeared to be the bullfinches. In these deep shaded lanes one constantly hears the faint plaintive little piping sound, the almost inaudible alarm note of the concealed bird; and at intervals, following the sound, he suddenly dashes out, showing his sharp-winged shape and clear grey and black upper plumage marked with white for a moment or two before vanishing once more in the overhanging foliage. We went a long way round, but at last coming to {189} an open spot we saw two cottages and two women and a boy standing talking by a gate, and of these people we asked the way to Priors Dean. They could not tell us. They knew it was not far away--a mile perhaps; but they had never been to it, nor seen it, and didn't well know the direction. The boy when asked shook his head. A middle-aged man was digging about thirty yards away, and to him one of the women now called, "Can you tell them the way to Priors Dean?" The man left off digging, straightened himself, and gazed steadily at us for some moments. He was one of the usual type--nine in every ten farm labourers in this corner of Hampshire are of it--thinnish, of medium height, a pale, parchment face, rather large straightish nose, pale eyes with little speculation in them, shaved mouth and chin, and small side whiskers as our fathers wore them. The moustache has not yet been adopted by these conservatives. The one change they have made is, alas! in their dress--the rusty black coat for the smock frock. When he had had his long gaze, he said, "Priors Dean?" "Yes, Priors Dean," repeated the woman, raising her voice. He turned up two spadefuls of earth, then asked again, "Priors Dean?" "Priors Dean!" shouted the woman. "Can't you tell 'em how to get to it?" Then she laughed. She had perhaps come from some other part of the country where minds are not quite so slow, and where the {190} slow-minded person is treated as being deaf and shouted at. Then, at last, he stuck his spade into the soil, and leaving it, slowly advanced to the gate and told us to follow a path which he pointed out, and when we got on the hill we would see Priors Dean before us. [Sidenote: Churches old and new]