But there is reason in most things, and the reason for this uncompromising attitude is found, according to rumour, in the nearness of Mapledurham to Reading, which sends out numerous boating-parties at holiday times; and such parties, we all know, are not always discreet, either in word or deed. [Illustration: MAPLEDURHAM MILL.] The old mill of Mapledurham is, now that Iffley Mill has become a thing of the past, the most picturesque on the Thames. Near by it stands the humble little church, amid tall elms, with monuments of the Blounts and others, secluded from lesser folk in a side chapel. A curious small mural monument, with the representation of a dropped curtain, is to be seen here, to the memory of Captain Adrian Rose, born 1878, died 1908. He served in the Boer War. The beautiful late Tudor mansion of the exclusive Blounts, built by Sir Michael Blount, Lieutenant of the Tower in 1581, stands a little way back from the river, and turns its front away from it. Like so many Elizabethan manor-houses, its plan is that of an elongated capital letter E, the upper and lower projecting limbs formed by the wings; the middle being the entrance. The view of it at some little distance down the mile-long avenue of stately elms is delightful, whether you see it under the mid-day sun, or by the mellow romantic afterglow of a summer evening. At either time the richness in colour of its old red-brick front, patterned in lozenge shapes by vitrified bricks of a darker hue, is evident. It is a house of some romance. Legends tell that on the death of a Blount, or prophetically before such an event—it is not quite clear which—an elm of the long avenue falls; by which it would seem that the owner of this avenue of many trees, a large proportion of them past their prime and prone (as elms especially are) to fall suddenly and without apparent cause, must sometimes receive a shock to his nerves, especially if he be superstitious; and as the Blounts have ever been Roman Catholics, it seems safe enough to deduce superstition in many of them. The family have been seated here some four hundred years, and are kin of that Sir Walter Blount who was slain at Shrewsbury fight, in 1403; cut down by Douglas, who mistook him for King Henry. “A gallant knight he was,” says Hotspur, pointing out to Douglas his mistake, “his name was Blunt, semblably furnished like the King himself.” As popish recusants, and as Royalists in the civil war, the Blounts have suffered sequestration, and have seen hostile soldiers quartered in their old house, and the Sir Charles Blount of that time was slain in the service of the King at Oxford in 1644.