The road was going broad and green and straight between bare banks in the course set by the tributary from Farnborough, when suddenly it bent to the south for a few yards, and then again west by a little pond under some willows. It descended, much narrowed and hedged, past the ash trees and sycamores of White House, and then, with a sharp northward turn along the Wantage road and in a few yards another to the west at Red House, it recovered its direction and presumably its original course. Probably the half a mile or more between the two crooks is not an innovation, but the crooks themselves are, as it were, the punishment inflicted on the old road by two newer or at some time more vigorous roads cutting across it. [Illustration: Letcombe Castle.] Beyond Red House I passed Letcombe Castle or Segsbury Camp, the road running close and parallel to its straight south side. A road crossed mine and penetrated the green ramparts of the camp from a corrugated-iron farm that stood with a thatched barn under some ash trees--behind it a grassy down with clumps beyond. The road was now so broad that it was hardly at all marked except downhill, or where a crossway roughened it, or at some busy section between one cross-road and another, where it would have one narrow, well-worn strip. At the right-hand turning to Letcombe Bassett stood a sycamore and some ash trees, and there were roses in the thorn hedge. Letcombe Bassett was at the foot of a round buttress of the downs called Gramp’s Hill, but was half hidden in grouped trees which continued above and alongside the winding white road to Letcombe Regis a mile beyond. Gramp’s Hill and the next and far more prominent hill formed between them a long, deep hollow, winding up into the hill and terraced on its slopes with flights of green steps. This winding made almost an island of a small hill, round and flat-topped, and the top of this hill had been mown and a waggon in the centre was being loaded with hay. Here was the place to build a castle in the air--and also on the turf of the downs. The man who did so would probably inhabit somewhat longer than the philosopher did Wayland’s Smithy. He might live there even until he died. But it is not likely that his heir--supposing that he had an heir--would continue after him. In any case it would at once be called the “Folly.” Clumps of trees planted on high places to please the eye and to be a landmark are now called “Follies” almost as a matter of course. Any house built high or in a great solitude is likely to be called a “Folly.” A house may earn the name by having walls more than a foot thick, in a district of jerry-builders where builders are bankrupt once a month. Thus people condemn the extraordinary. If it is a little thing like a white blackbird, they shoot at it: if it is a big, helpless thing like a whale stranded in Cornwall, they carve it alive. But to call it a “Folly” and have done with it is the most innocent form of condemnation.