When he returned, which was in the space of a quarter of an hour or thereabouts, we went on our way. 'Twas indeed a way from which it would have been easy to go astray, so many turns it had. At last in about an hour's time, for our burden caused us to travel but slowly, we came to the house. It stood by the side of a green lane that ran through a wood, seeming to be but rarely used by horse or man. In front was a garden, passing fair with flowers, pinks and sweet-williams and a host of others; the house itself too was covered to the very eaves of the roof with roses and honeysuckle. And behind, though this I saw not at the time but only came to know afterwards, was the fairest spot that ever I saw. First there was a level space of grass, so smooth and green and well kept that our fairest lawns in Oxford could scarce compare with it. 'Twas bounded on the right hand by a low wall, grown over with ivy, and beyond this wall was a bank sloping down to as clear and fair a brook as ever babbled in man's ear. On the left hand of the green was another wall, some six feet high, with fruit trees of sundry kinds trained upon it. Beyond the green was a kitchen garden, as neatly ordered with all manner of fruits and herbs as can be conceived, and behind this again a wood sloping upwards to a height of three hundred feet and more, with the brook aforesaid leaping down through it and making, as I found afterwards, the fairest pools that can be imagined. We rested the litter in the wood when first we came in sight of the house, and I went on alone to speak with the minister. 'Twas still early, scarce seven of the clock, if I remember, and the good man was pacing to and fro in the garden before his house, with a book in his hand, from which he read aloud as he walked. I could hear that it was the book of Common Prayer. He was a man of taller stature than the common, but that stooped forward somewhat, and slender as a youth. I judged him then, seeing him for the first time, to have been about sixty-five years of age, but learned afterwards that I had reckoned to him ten years too many. Trouble had made him old before his time, at the least, in look, for in some matters he was, as will be seen, one of them that are ever young. There was such a sweetness in his face as passed all skill of writer's pen or painter's brush to picture; his eyes large and grey; his forehead broad, and wrinkled with many lines; his cheeks somewhat thin and tinged with a faint colour that would not have ill-beseemed a maiden's face; his lips small but full, though not over-full (over-full lips, I have noted, seem to show a passionate temper, and over-thin, a cruel); his hair, white as silver, fell almost to his shoulders. He looked, I do remember to have thought, as might an angel that had grown old. For dress he wore a cassock, tied about his middle with a woollen band of very rusty brown, and grey hose, and shoes with black buckles. On his head was a skull cap of