A literary association illuminates their annals at a later period, the spinster Martha Blount, having been Pope’s “Stella” or “Patty,” a constant friend and correspondent, and the recipient at the poet’s death of his books, his plate, and £1,000. That Pope was not in sympathy with the rural surroundings of Mapledurham seems evident from his lines upon Miss Martha on one occasion returning hither “To plain work, to purling brooks, Old-fashioned halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks.” But then, that was the approved eighteenth-century way! [Illustration: MAPLEDURHAM HOUSE.] A long three miles leads direct from Mapledurham to Reading—a lovely road through woodlands, by way of Caversham; but Caversham spoils it all, at the end: Caversham, the cross-river suburb of Reading, where the new streets impinge upon the fair face of the country, and where the gasworks and the destructors, and suchlike evidences of civilisation abound, and crying children and angry mothers cry and spank. If I were a Blount and owned Mapledurham, I would not journey from it by way of Caversham, that is quite certain! The best way is undoubtedly by river, past delightful Purley; or by the road along the Berkshire bank, through Upper Purley, and past Tilehurst railway station. Purley might well be thought to lie outside the strife of the wicked world. The “lea” down in which the village lies is so secluded that none others than those who live here, or have business in the place, ever come into it—unless they be stalwart or inquisitive explorers of the calibre—shall it be said?—of the present writer. The “village,” of a few rustic cottages, lies down below the high road, between the tall embankment of the Great Western Railway and the river. You may hear the trains numerously rushing by, swishing with a curious sound past the dense trees that fill this little nook and flourish upon the embankment itself, but you cannot well see them: only the arm of a tall signal-post wagging continually between the signal to proceed or to stop. The trains tell the villagers, plainly enough, that there is a busy world; and they can see it, plainly enough, when they go for their weekly marketing to Reading; but the business of it all passes by, out of sight, in the manner typified by those swiftly-moving trains. There should be no ill in this place; but since they are human beings that live here, and not angels, there has been of late a good deal of trouble, well-known to local people in what was styled by the Berkshire newspapers of 1907-8 “The Purley Scandal.” There need have been no scandal, so far as the outer world was concerned, had it not been for the action of the rector of the parish. But let a summary of the case, extracted from one of the newspapers, here be given: