Bidding adieu to Quatford, we descend the hill, pass the 'Danery,' or Deanery, Inn, and the site of Quatford bridge, and plod on between hedgerows bejewelled with glistening dewdrops. The 'charm' of the birds, to use the Shropshire phrase, no longer enlivens the byway; but a solitary songster every now and again wakes the echoes of woodland or coppice. Atalanta, yonder, taking heart of grace, suns her glossy wings on a spray of the 'swete bramble floure'; while the rabbits, startled at our approach, bob off to their burrows in the sandy bank. Dudmaston Hall is left away to our right, and anon we come to Quat, a mite of a place whose name, derived from Coed, a wood, shews it once stood within the bounds of Morf Forest. Some three miles to the eastward, close to the Staffordshire border, stands Gatacre Hall, the ancestral home of the family of that ilk, which has been settled here, it is said, ever since the reign of Edward the Confessor. Major-General Sir W. Gatacre, one of the victors of Omdurman, is a distinguished scion of this good old stock, having first seen the light, if we are rightly informed, at Gatacre Hall. The existing mansion, a modern, red-brick edifice, seated in a beautiful locality, has usurped the place of the original house, which must have been unique of its kind, to judge from the following description. 'It was built,' writes Camden, 'of a dark grey free stone, coated with a thin greenish vitrified substance, about the thickness of a crown piece. The hall was nearly an exact square, and most remarkably constructed. At each corner, in the middle of each side, and in the centre, was an immense oak tree, hewed nearly square, and without branches; set with their heads on large stones laid about a foot deep in the ground, and with their roots uppermost, which roots, with a few rafters, formed a compleat arched roof. The floor was of oak boards three inches thick, not sawed, but plainly chipped.' [Illustration: The Butter Cross. Alveley.] Beyond Hampton Load ferry we ascend a lane shewing evidences of having been paved. Coming to a corner where four ways meet, we see, by the laneside, the old stone Cross illustrated here; a monolith about 5 feet in height, upon a circular stone base. On each side of the rounded head a cross is faintly distinguishable; but, as a passer-by truly remarks, 'They've yacked un and yowed un, so as you canna very well make out what it be all about.' When and why the cross was erected there is no record to shew, but it is evidently of great antiquity, and probably was used as a meeting place for holding a sort of open-air market. It is sometimes called the Butter Cross, the lower stone being supposed to represent a cheese, and the round head a pat of butter! A quarter of an hour's walk brings us to Alveley, a rather untidy village, scattered higgledy-piggledy along a crooked roadway. St. Mary's church, however, proves interesting enough to make amends for other shortcomings.