The red hand of Ulster, badge of honourable distinction, is not understanded by the country folk, and so, to account for it, the Stoke D'Abernon villagers have evolved this moving tale. That is my view of the legend. If you are curious concerning it, why, Stoke D'Abernon is near at hand, and there, in as charming a village church as you could wish to see, filled, beside, with archæological interest, is this memorial. Did space suffice (which it doesn't) much might be said of Stoke D'Abernon, of Slyfield Farm, and of Cobham village; which last must on no account be confounded with Cobham Street. The latter place is, in fact, just an offshoot (though an old one 'tis true) of the original village, and it arose out of the large amount of custom that was always going along the Portsmouth Road in olden times. [Illustration: COBHAM CHURCHYARD.] Cobham Street stood here in receipt of this custom and of much patronage from that very fine high-handed gentleman, the Honourable Charles Hamilton, who in the reign of George II. filched a large tract of common land just beyond the other side of the Mole, enclosed it, and by the expenditure of vast sums of money caused such gardens to blossom here, such caves and grottoes to be formed, and such cunning dispositions of statuary to be made (all in the classic taste of the time) that that carping critic, Horace Walpole, was compelled to a reluctant admiration. And this was the origin of the estate still known as Pain's Hill. "'Tis very bad, in man or woman, To steal a goose from off the common: But who shall plead that man's excuse Who steals the common from the goose?" Thus the metrical moralist. But this was common sport (no joke intended here!) during last century and in the beginning of this, and if a man stole a few hundred acres in this way, he was thought none the worse of for it. For all that, however, the Honourable Charles Hamilton was nothing more, in fact, than a common thief, with this difference--that the poor devil who "prigged" a handkerchief was hanged for petty larceny, while the rich man who stole land on a large scale, and converted it to his own uses, was hailed as a man of taste and culture, and his robbery commended. [Illustration: PAIN'S HILL.] [Sidenote: _WISLEY_]