A handful of antiquated cottages and small farmhouses, and a little green churchyard with headstones bowered in roses, are soon left behind. Anon, after passing The Horns, a wayside posting house, we strike into a lane leading to the south, and hark away through some broken country to Pepperhill, a curious old dwelling-house standing all by itself, close upon the Staffordshire border. Built upon an outcrop of the sandstone rock, the house occupies a commanding position, having probably superseded a structure of considerably greater antiquity. The present edifice, partly constructed of brick, partly of stone, has a mighty chimney stack projecting from its southern end; and now affords a home for several cottagers. The main building has been tastefully fitted up as a rural residence by Colonel Thorneycroft, of Wolverhampton. A kind of observatory has been formed upon the roof, whence a wide and beautiful prospect is obtained towards the west and south. In the garden hard by rises the curious stone structure shewn in the sketch on p. 169. For want of a better term, it has been called a Fountain, though amongst the country folk it goes by the name of the 'Pepperbox.' It is hexagonal in plan; of Italian, or classic, design; much worn and weathered by time, as well as damaged by careless hands; and appears to be of early seventeenth-century date. Broken, weedgrown and neglected, this old Fountain is so nicely proportioned and finely wrought, that it looks picturesque in its decay. The well to which it originally served as a cover has long since ceased to exist. Pepperhill, we understand, was formerly an appanage of the Earls of Shrewsbury and Talbot; and was afterwards the home of Leonard Smallpage, whose name we have already seen in Albrighton churchyard. Some scanty remains of ecclesiastical buildings are traceable at Lower Pepperhill, but of their history very little is known. [Illustration: The Royal Oak.] [Illustration: Bridgnorth.] ROUND ABOUT BRIDGNORTH. Clinging limpet-like upon the crest and shoulders of a steep, sandstone crag, on the western bank of the Severn, the ancient town of Bridgnorth occupies a situation of more than ordinary picturesqueness. 'Where Severne runneth, Nature hath made a terrible Dike,' wrote John Leland anent Bridgnorth in the days of Henry VIII.; and to this 'terrible Dike' the town owes its unique aspect among all the towns of Shropshire. Confronting the river rise, tier above tier, the little old brown-roofed dwellings; so closely packed that the cottager, as he stands in his rustic porch, can almost peep down his neighbour's chimney and see what is cooking for dinner! Bits of garden ground with their varied greenery lend a pleasant, rural air; while in and between wind steep, narrow, stepped paths; reminding one of Clovelly, and of certain mountain townlets in northern Italy.