"Weatherbury Upper Farm," the home of Bathsheba, which she inherited from her uncle, is not to be found in Puddletown, but if the pilgrim desires to find it he must proceed up the valley of the Puddle, in the direction of Piddlehinton. Before reaching the village he will come to Lower Walterstone, where a fine Jacobean manor-house, bearing the date 1586, will be easily recognised as the original which Thomas Hardy made to serve as the "Upper Farm" in _Far from the Madding Crowd_. In the story the author has placed the farm a mile or more from its actual position, and it is vividly portrayed: "A hoary building, of the Jacobean stage of Classic Renaissance as regards its architecture, and of a proportion which told at a glance that, as is so frequently the case, it had once been the manorial hall upon a small estate around it, now altogether effaced as a distinct property, and merged in the vast tract of a non-resident landlord, which comprised several such modest demesnes. Fluted pilasters, worked from the solid stone, decorated its front, and above the roof pairs of chimneys were here and there linked by an arch, some gables and other unmanageable features still retaining traces of their Gothic extraction. Soft brown mosses, like faded velveteen, formed cushions upon the stone tiling, and tufts of the house-leek or sengreen sprouted from the eaves of the low surrounding buildings. A gravel walk leading from the door to the road in front was encrusted at the sides with more moss--here it was a silver-green variety, the nut-brown of the gravel being visible to the width of only a foot or two in the centre. This circumstance, and the generally sleepy air of the whole prospect here, together with the animated and contrasting state of the reverse façade, suggested to the imagination that on the adaptation of the building for farming purposes the vital principle of the house had turned round inside its body to face the other way." CHAPTER V DORCHESTER When I am dead, my body shall go back To the hills between the Ridgeway and the Sea-- To the Earthworks and terracing and ancient bridle-track To the Dorset hills my heart has held in fee; My limbs that thrived on them shall be their very own, I shall live again in little wayside flowers; My flesh and bones and sinew shall give life to mighty trees And my spirit shall abide in ancient towers. * * * * * When I am dead, my dust shall mix with clay, And "puddle" some lone dew-pond on the hill, So every Dorset lad who drinks upon his way Will somehow lead me back to Dorset still. ANONYMOUS.