The church stood on the east side of the village square; immediately beyond it the road turned sharp to the east towards Canterbury, leaving on its left the ruins of an archi-episcopal palace, and on the west side of the square the road turned equally sharply to the right towards Sevenoaks. On the south side of the square--exactly opposite the road which came down the hill--were the gates of Restham Manor House: heavy old oak gates, studded with huge iron nails, and set in a fine old wall of that rose-coloured brick which only the Tudors seemed able to manufacture. The house inside the walls was of the same brick, with stone mullioned windows and twisted chimneys, and was considered one of the most perfectly preserved specimens of Tudor architecture in Kent. The heavily-studded front door led straight into a great hall: a hall made beautiful by its carved-oak roof and chimney-piece, and its black-and-white marble floor, and comfortable by the numerous rugs and tapestries which my father and I had spent years in collecting. It was in this hall that Annabel and I chiefly lived and moved and had our being. Out of it, on the left of the huge fire-place, two steps and a door led up to the drawing-room--a typical "withdrawing-room" of the olden times; and on the right of the fire-place another door opened into a corridor, which in turn led to the dining-room, the library, the staircase, and finally to the kitchen department. Upstairs the whole front of the house was taken up by an oak-pannelled picture-gallery, from the windows of which one learned what a mistake one had made in imagining that Restham lay at the bottom of the hill; for below it the ground still sloped away and away, fading at last into the blue distance of the Weald of Kent. Such was the spot which I had the happiness to call home, and which played its part--as I believe all natural surroundings do--in the formation of my character. Surely it was from the natural beauty around me from my birth that I derived my appreciation of--nay, rather my passion for--beauty in all its forms, and from the peculiar spiritual atmosphere of a place which pilgrim feet had trod for centuries, and on which pilgrim fingers had traced the Sign of the Cross, that I imbibed that pervading consciousness of the unseen world surrounding us, and that unquestioning acceptance of the phenomena which men call miracles, which have been the most powerful influences of my life, and which are as strong in me to-day as they were when I was a child.