I once met, on Chobham Ridges, a pleasantly contented family. In front of a sort of bivouac of bent poles covered with cloths sat an old, weatherbeaten man, tailor-fashion, making a straw beehive. Another beehive, finished, with a straw handle, lay at his side. A wood fire smoked and sputtered a yard or two away; on a flat wooden barrow near were rough cooking utensils and a dark tabby cat; two small boys, one of them with not much more on him than a large pair of trousers, brought wood and bracken for the fire. It was raining, but I was wished good afternoon with the utmost cheerfulness. Were those his boys? They were; they generally went with him. Was there a good sale for beehives round there? There was a pretty good sale; this one, with a handle, he should try to sell for two shillings; he might have to take less; a farmer let him have the straw. Yes, he was known about there. That was the boys' cat; it generally went with them. What was that noise in the tent? That was a pair of kittens; yes, the boys liked to have them; they generally had kittens. One of them picked up the cat, upside down, with obvious affection. Chobham itself lies five or six miles away from Chobham Ridges, south by a mile even from Chobham Common. Long before you come into the village you catch sight of the church spire, with its lead covering washed by the rain to a brilliant whiteness. Rising above the red tiles of the village into a blue sky it looks as if it had been painted yesterday. The church has been largely rebuilt, but has some fine Norman pillars, and contains besides the tomb of the great Nicholas Heath, once Archbishop of York. He was Lord Chancellor of England under Queen Mary, and a sound Papist. When Elizabeth came to the throne he resigned, but remained "so much in the Queen's Bon-graces," as an old writer puts it, "that she visited him once a Year through his Life, believing his mistaken Piety sincere." Two miles behind the Ridges is Frimley, with an old inn and a church to which Americans come often. Bret Harte lived his last years at a house on the hillside near, and is buried in the churchyard. But the Bret Harte of _The Luck of Roaring Camp_ and _The Heathen Chinee_ does not, of course, belong to Frimley; those were earlier successes which he never equalled later. The village politician ought to flourish at Frimley. On a board near the church I found a warning against a crime which must be becoming rarer. "Notice is hereby given that any person or persons found damaging the parish pump will be prosecuted," it ran, but the pump I did not find. In Aubrey's day, Frimley had the gentlest of hermits. He fled from the changes and chances of the Parliamentary wars, and led the simplest possible life in the wilds. Aubrey describes his cottage: